San Diego Repertory Theatre is presenting Karen Hartman’s Roz and Ray, directed by Delcia Turner Sonnenberg, featuring Carla Harting and Steven Lone, at the Lyceum Stage. Set in Hartman’s hometown, San Diego, Roz and Ray portrays two people who are personally and professionally involved in the controversial treatment of hemophilia. The play spans 15 years, from 1976 through 1987 and a single day in 1991.
The beginning scene takes place at Children’s Hospital in San Diego in 1976, when Roz Kagan, a brilliant and caring doctor, explains to Ray, a father of twin sons with hemophilia, about a cutting-edge blood transfusion treatment using freeze-dried powdered concentrates containing Factor 8 and 9. Roz is excited about this new treatment because the concentrates can be stored and administered at home, eliminating countless trips to the hospital to receive conventional full-blood transfusion treatment. In the 1980s however, it was found that Factor 8 and 9 concentrates contained tainted blood from donors with AIDS, leaving more than half of the hemophiliac population in the United States infected with HIV. [Read more…]