California: Kaiser Play Puts Sex, AIDS in Spotlight

Before an audience of more than 500 freshmen in the Livermore High School gymnasium, Kaiser Permanente's educational theater program recently performed "Secrets," a play about teen sex, HIV, abstinence and drug use. "Secrets" is one of four of the HMO's theater productions that play free to 300,000 Northern California students annually.

"We're not going to do it," actress Charisse Loriaux told her boyfriend, "Eddie" (Aaron Leong). "But if we did, this is what it would be like," she said. Suddenly, Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" played from loudspeakers, eliciting audience laughter. "Eddie, I'm ready," said Loriaux, fluffing a scarlet blanket across the stage. She then dumped condoms from her purse and recited do's, don'ts and health precautions, making Eddie squirm with embarrassment. "If we're not ready to talk about it," she said, "we're not ready to do it."

"Theater reaches [students] in a way that a textbook or their mother lecturing them doesn't," said Regina Dwerlkotte, Kaiser's theater program director. "They see in the responses of another human being the impact of their decisions. They can take it in on both the head and heart level."

Back at the gymnasium, the crowd soon realized the drama's chain of events -- including unprotected sex and secrets, affairs, shared needles and one-night stands -- had made Eddie a link in the HIV infections affecting everyone on stage.

"Even though this generation has grown up with [AIDS]," said Dwerlkotte, "they really don't know how to negotiate the moment, the consequences of difficult choices." "We don't always know the impact we may have. Hopefully, we're saving lives."

Back to other news for October 28, 2005