One Woman’s Story Seeks, and Finds, Theater Audience

Three years and nine months have now passed since I shed some tears at a funeral, returned to the office and started to write:

Once, in a happier time, Linda and I were going to make a movie.

We figured it would be a TV production, something for the networks or cable. It was movie-of-the-week material, a triumphant tear-jerker about a woman in peril, the woman being Linda. Still, as we dined under the stars one warm evening in Santa Monica, we couldn’t help but indulge our big-screen fantasies. “When Harry Met Sally” found its way into our conversation. I suggested Meg Ryan should play our heroine.

Linda smiled and laughed and I think she blushed. Meg would do.

Hollywood is of course fickle, and though the story of Linda Luschei Hunio has been optioned a couple of times, it has never progressed beyond that.

But recently, Linda’s father, Martin Luschei, called with joyful news. He was driving down from San Luis Obispo to attend the opening performance of “Lovable Blonde Seeking,” an original stage play inspired by Linda’s life and dedicated to her spirit.

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“Lovable Blonde Seeking” isn’t literally Linda’s story, but close enough. Pat Sawyer’s play tells the story of Anna, a young widow who learns she has been infected with HIV days after her husband’s death. After five years of grief and loneliness and secrecy, Anna boldly sets out to find love by placing an ad in the LA Weekly personals.

Anna’s make-believe ad and experience closely mirror those of Linda. A skillful writer, Linda took great care with her words:

LOVABLE PRETTY BLONDE blue-eyed SWF, 33, intelligent, warm, funny. I’m HIV-positive, seeking together SWM for platonic or other relationship. Call . . .

Remember that she placed her ad in early 1991. There was more ignorance and fear then concerning HIV and AIDS, and much poorer treatment as well. The heterosexual mainstream was only awakening to a virus that had been ravaging gay men, IV drug users and hemophiliacs.

The response to Linda’s ad astonished her and everyone she told. Sixty men left 72 messages. Some, she told me, were “creepy,” but many said they were struck by her honesty. She would meet most at least once for tea in a Westside restaurant.

The other day, I sat through the last dress rehearsal of “Lovable Blonde Seeking” inside the tiny, 50-seat Third Stage Theater in Burbank.

The story unfolds in an ingenious plot and a cast of two women and eight men, several of whom play more than one role. Sawyer, her co-director, Donna Dubain, and the cast provide plenty of comedy to leaven the painful experiences.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but I will note that, in real life, Linda wound up steadily dating two men whom her friends nicknamed “Friday” and “Saturday” for obvious reasons.

A friend of Linda who had heard a reading told me she thought Sawyer had captured Linda’s wit, and I would agree. One reason may be that Sawyer, who is HIV-positive, knew Linda.

She met both Linda and Linda’s friend Ann Copeland in support groups. AIDS would claim Ann’s life two years after it claimed Linda. Although the play was inspired by Linda’s story, Sawyer named her heroine Anna as a way to honor both women.

“Lovable Blonde Seeking” opened in February with special sold-out performances to benefit two nonprofit education and support groups, Women at Risk and Women Alive. Linda and Ann founded Women at Risk and were active in Women Alive.

Sawyer’s plot departs from Linda’s story to make it a more universal tale of women with HIV. One of Anna’s dates, Sawyer says, is actually based on a date she experienced.

Whereas Linda’s husband had been infected by a blood transfusion, Anna comes to believe that her late husband had never told her he was bisexual. This is, Sawyer says, the more common experience among women infected with HIV.

And this is a two-act play, whereas Linda’s life had three acts, the final being her romance with and marriage to Stephen Jay Hunio, who also had HIV. I would meet Stephen at Linda’s memorial service and, less than two years later, would write a story about his father’s description of Stephen’s final moments, dying in his parents’ Woodland Hills home. Like Linda, he died surrounded by people who loved him.

Stephen was buried beside Linda at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. Martin Luschei told me that Stephen’s parents, Bob and Edi Hunio, would be joining them for the opening of “Lovable Blonde Seeking.”

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A funny thing happened on my way to the dress rehearsal. I parked on a side street not far from the Third Stage Theater, and another car promptly parallel-parked in front of mine. A pretty blond woman stepped out, and I thought that must be Linda--or, rather, the actress playing “Anna.” Her name is Aurora Cravens.

“Anna is a very optimistic, gentle woman,” Cravens would tell me later. “A peaceful woman. Very inspirational.”

The actress, new in town, told me how, after she had read for the part and won the role, Pat Sawyer gave her articles Linda had written for HIV newsletters. Something clicked as she read Linda’s writings.

“I feel a responsibility to her,” she said. “To me she seems like a dove. Peaceful, beautiful, very inspirational. The outside is soft and gentle, but with a very tough core . . . someone who brings light into the darkness.”

I like to think of Linda smiling, laughing, blushing.

Aurora will do.