By Niki Price
Oregon Coast Today
See schedule of Bay City's Dr. King weekend events, below.
For playwright Helen Hill, the Eugenics Era is just one more big, ugly stone that needs to be turned over — on stage, and with raw honesty. Through her plays, this Bay City writer has examined the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon and the plight of the homeless; now, with “Perfection,” Hill has turned her gaze on the practice of state-sanctioned sterilizations of the infirm and mentally ill.
After being selected for workshop readings in New York City and Portland in 2006, “Perfection” has returned to Tillamook County as the centerpiece in the Bay City Arts Center’s second annual observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. On Sunday, Jan. 13, actors from Portland’s Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center will offer a staged reading of the play at the center, four miles north of Tillamook.
The topic of eugenics has always interested Hill. Most Oregonians, however, hadn’t thought much about it until 2002, when Gov. John Kitzhaber issued a formal apology for the state’s forcible sterilization of at least 2,650 people, deemed “feeble-minded” or unfit in some way. “Perfection,” is about a fictional African American named Anna May Dobbs, who is first an inmate, then a worker, at a state mental hospital where many of these surgeries took place.
“These places were designed to feed and clothe people, to give them good medical care. She is bright and stays on, and works with one of the doctors there,” Hill said of Anna May. “She believes, with him, that they are doing a huge service for mankind.”
“The whole eugenics era had a theme running through it, that it was going to save civilization by raising the race up. (Both Anna and the doctor) work together for the greater good, but the play hinges on her realization of what they’re really doing. It’s about one woman’s struggle.”
The word is of Greek origin, meaning “well-bred,” and was first used by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin and follower of Charles Darwin. In 1883, Galton combined Darwin’s evolutionary “survival of the fittest” theory and combined it with the genetics work of Gregor Mendel. If unwanted traits could be eliminated from plant and animal stock, why couldn’t these theories be applied to humans?
In the first decades of the 20th century, nearly every state built institutions to house those who exhibited those unwanted behaviors, from mental disabilities and homosexual proclivities to criminal behavior and now-treatable conditions like epilepsy. Eugenicists believed that by preventing these inmates from reproducing, they could rid the race of degenerate traits and genetic deformities. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans — a shameful percentage of them black, Indian or others of non-white descent — were involuntarily sterilized in the name of eugenics, with the taxpayer footing the bill.
“‘Perfection’ is based on very real stories about what happened. I did a lot of research, read a lot of books, and even talked to some folks,” Hill said. “It’s not something that people really want to talk about. It makes your skin crawl.”
“It was a really hard play to write. I hated every minute of it,” said Hill. “It’s just dealing with that part of human nature, how horrible we are to damage each other so much. But I had to make myself do it. You can’t write a play like this and spare the details.”
Hill is not known for shying away from the uncomfortable. A staged reading of “Time Out of Mind,” a full-length play about the KKK in Tillamook County, toured high schools and colleges in 2004. “The Filmore Hotel,” which deals with homelessness and gentrification, was performed with a cast from Dignity Village, a homeless encampment in Portland. Hill has also won recognition for “Evening Gloves,” “The Big Crunch” and “Missing Matter.” She’s a co-founder of the Bay City Arts Center Theatre, now in its sixth year in residence at a renovated Masonic temple at Fifth and A streets.
“Perfection” was finished last spring, in time for a workshop development at the Black Experimental Theatre’s Core Project in New York City. Later that summer, it was a finalist in the Emergence Festival for New Women Playwrights, sponsored by Radiant Theatre.
Hill said she was pleased with the Emergence festival’s staged reading, held in July at the Coho Theatre in Portland, but wished that the acting company had been more racially diverse.
So, when planning the Bay City reading for MLK Jr. Day in 2007, Hill sought a more diverse acting company. She found the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, which is dedicated to creating “an environment in which people of every ethnic and cultural background can come together as artists and audience to explore, honor and celebrate their diversity.”
“The script is so clear. Anna is a black woman,” Hill said. “So I went to the IFCC, and told them we’d like to have a reading, with the parts played by the right ethnic cultures. They said they’d love to do it, and the artistic director is both in the play and directing. I think they’ll do a really good job.”
Some might want to forget the Eugenics Era in the United States, or to ignore its influence on the racial policies of Nazi Germany, but not Hill. Only by examining this period in history, and those whose lives it shattered, can we hope to learn from our mistakes, she said.
“I try, not so subtly, (to say that self-hatred) is the genesis of all fear and racism. When we hate people and put them down, it’s because of our own failings and insecurities,” she said. “I still don’t see racism and classism as being all over with. When Barak Obama is already getting death threats, we haven’t really progressed. So I’m really, really sorry to say that I think the play is still relevant.”
Schedule of events
Free to the public unless otherwise noted
Friday, Jan. 12
5-7 p.m. — Reception for “The Beloved Community,” an open, multi-media exhibition of works relating to the life and dreams of MLK Jr. Also featuring peace posters by Tillamook-area junior high school students.
Saturday, Jan. 13
7 p.m. — Big-screen showing of “At the River I Stand,” an award-winning documentary about MLK’s last two months in Memphis and the sanitation workers’ strike.
Sunday, Jan. 14
3 p.m. — Staged reading of “Perfection,” by Helen Hill. The fictional story of Anna May Dobbs, a black woman struggling for identity and dignity during the 1920s and 1930s, when the Eugenics movement was at its peak in Oregon, and across the country. $5 at the door.
Monday, Jan. 15
Noon-5 p.m. — Community celebration of MLK Jr., with free group art and music activities for children and families, including domino art, refreshments and open mike performances, plus drumming with Planet Beat, Jim Nelson’s fourth-grade class.
The BCAC is located at Fifth and A Streets in Bay City, just four miles north of Tillamook off Hwy. 101. For details, call 503-377-9620 or 842-7013, or write to baycityartscenter@hotmail.com
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| Helen Hill. Contributed photo. |
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