The Times Mirror Company, Los Angeles Times - April 19, 1995, Wednesday, Orange County Edition SECTION: LIFE & STYLE; PAGE: E-4
Beverly Beyette; Times Staff Writer

The response was overwhelmingly positive, said Dolores Chavez, program manager for the Mark Taper Forum's PLAY (Performing for Los Angeles Youth). "We came into it with apprehension--'Let's put it out there and see what happens.' " Now more than 10,000 children have seen it.

The play is "The Yellow Boat," David P. Saar's tragic yet inspiring story of the death in 1987 of his 8-year-old son, Benjamin, a hemophiliac who contracted HIV through blood factor transfusions.

Pretty heavy stuff for elementary school kids? Death is never easy to deal with, but, as the play's director, Peter Brosius, said, urban kids today "have been through all kinds of deaths," from divorce of their parents to death of a pet to gang violence.

And while some of the youngest children have only the vaguest understanding of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, they know their teachers may no longer routinely tend their bloody noses. As one child playgoer put it, AIDS is "when your blood is no good."

And many can tell you right off that AIDS killed rapper Eazy-E.

It was a rapt, wiggle-free, giggle-free audience of about 400 from nine elementary and middle schools at a recent performance of "The Yellow Boat" at the Natural History Museum's Jean Delacour Auditorium.

"Once upon a time, there was a mom, a dad, a little teeny baby," began Joshua Fardon, a 29-year-old actor who convincingly plays Benjamin from birth to death, stepping outside himself with the help of a cloth doll that all but breathes and talks.

"The Yellow Boat" takes its title from a bedtime story told to Benjamin by his parents. The boat (a claw-footed bathtub painted yellow) is, at first, a magic vessel on which he can sail to the sun. Later, it becomes his hospital bed and, finally, it takes him up and away on his final journey.

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"A big issue," said director Brosius, "is always what's it like to have people turn against you, the fact that your best friend could betray you--and then come back."

That's what happened to Benjamin when no one came to his seventh birthday party. Even his best friend, Eddie, stayed away.

Later in the play, Benjamin gets a big laugh while putting across a big message about AIDS. A very nervous Eddie edges into Benjamin's hospital room. Look, Benjamin says, "You can't get it just from sitting next to me. It's not like cooties."

With an ear finely attuned to 8-year-olds, playwright Saar has Eddie ask the dying Benjamin, "Hey, Benjamin, can I have some of your Legos?'

"Sure," Benjamin says, "but not the castle."

The questions Benjamin asks his mother and father must have been asked by hundreds of terminally ill children. "Will it hurt?" "Will you put me in a box?"

From the time he was a toddler, Benjamin (who grew up in Arizona), loved to draw. In the play, he describes his feelings in terms of colors. His pain is like "pins of acid dripping green and purple and red."

During his illness, the real Benjamin painted scenes from life--his own body with dozens of those pins of pain stuck into it. The tubes that delivered the deadly blood. A doctor in green scrubs and a pair of horns. The art is displayed in the auditorium.

At play's end, the cast mingled with the kids, encouraging questions. "Does AIDS feel bad?" one child asked. "Yes, it feels very bad," Fardon said, "but Benjamin made himself feel better through his drawings."

"How did it feel to die?" a little girl wondered. Fardon used the question to explain that, while the play was very sad, it was also about making the most of a short life.

Saar wrote 19 drafts of "The Yellow Boat," Brosius said. At first, "He had a very moving play about a child who died. He wanted to do a very moving play about a child who lived."

After seeing the play, one child wrote, "I give you a 10+10. . . . When one of the actresses started to cry, it almost made me cry, too, but I held on. The play was better than 'Romeo and Juliet.' "

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