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"It's important for people to come out and show
support; they don't have to be afraid."
— Cassandra Jimmo
Sunday, December 2, 2001
By RAY PARKER, brparker@naplesnews.com
On the Gulf Coast High School stage Saturday, "David" argued with his sister against coming out to the family, especially since he's HIV positive.
"Everybody will look at me differently," David pleaded.
They argued until his sister persuaded David that he'll be loved.
After that vignette, and others dealing with Matthew Shephard, Ryan White and Cathy Robinson, the audience of 33 yelled out names of people they'd known infected by the virus.
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The nine student actors put their own twist on the play "At Risk: Who's at risk? We're all at risk," which they performed in commemoration of World AIDS Day on Saturday.
"Not enough kids really know about the disease, or they just think it'll never happen to them," said Blair Eckhardt, 16. "A lot of people are still ignorant. ...We tried to start a gay-straight club here at school but we're told we couldn't. Some topics just freak people out."
After the performance, the students collected donations and presented Robinson, a long-time AIDS activist, with $313 to go toward her Friends Together organization, which supports HIV/AIDS awareness.
"This is just so wonderful," Robinson said. "It being 20 years, this year's World AIDS Day is unique. Things have changed but not as much as they should."
Organizers said it's important people realize AIDS is no longer a disease of gay white males.
National and state statistics show HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is disproportionately spreading among African-American and Latino men and women nationwide.
And youth are among the groups most at risk of contracting the deadly virus.
"People like Magic Johnson are bad images to impressionable kids because they think there's no problems with the disease," Robinson said. "Calling (AIDS medication) a cocktail, these kids think it's like margaritas on the beach. Not 100 pills a day."
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that half of the new HIV infections hit Americans under the age of 25. A quarter of the new cases are in people younger than 21, it said.
"It's important for people to come out and show support; they don't have to be afraid," said Cassandra Jimmo of the Joe Logsdon Foundation, a Naples organization that helps those infected with the virus, including more than 70 children during the holidays.
Student actors Eckhardt, Bart Zino, Sam Conley, Genevieve Garris, Layla Bainter, Randi Davis, Andrea Stevens, Matt Jackson and Scott Miller have no illusions about how serious the epidemic is getting.
They said teens don't get lessons from home that prepare them for peer pressure later, nor are they well-informed on how the virus spreads.
"They think, 'It can't be me,' " Eckhardt said.
"The communication with teens is not that great," Zino said.
The message the group tried to convey with the play, he said, is that any teen has to think about the choices he makes, especially when it comes to sex.
"It's amazing the different things these people (we played) had gone through," Zino, 15, said.
Drama teacher Debra Kribbs came across the play during the International Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Neb. She and the cast added material, solicited personal accounts and tweaked the script. They added the parts about Shephard, White and Robinson, the Wyoming student brutally murdered in 1999.
White, who in the 1980s was denied access to his school because he was HIV positive, died in 1990.
"We did this because we love theater," Kribbs said. "As a group, we had a message to get across."
Spectator Dan Greco said the message was simple: If you're not having sex, don't do it; and if you are, use a condom.
"They dealt with a lot of the superstitions," he said, "as well as the truth about AIDS."