Perfection

“I’ve tried to create a play that contrasts the beauty of true human spirit with the mindless arrogance displayed by the architects of the eugenics movement.” – Helen Hill, playwright

Perfection is directed by Drammy Award winner and acclaimed veteran stage actor Brenda Phillips, and will be presented throughout February, 2009 in honor of Black History Month. There will be a moderated, open discussion of this controversial issue following each play.

In 2000, Governor Kitzhaber issued a public apology to the thousands of forced sterilization victims in Oregon. This was the first time many Oregonians had ever heard of Oregon’s eight decades of participation in the eugenics movement.

The American Eugenics movement sprang up in the early 1900’s, and it is still with us today. Scientists, religious leaders and social workers throughout America proclaimed that civilization must protect itself against ‘defective germ plasm’ or the human race would not survive. A powerful wave of fanatical public opinion swept the country, resulting in state laws that required the forced sterilization of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. Victims were lumped together, targeted because they were black, poor, native American, criminal, morally ‘degenerate’, handicapped, insane or arbitrarily deemed ‘a probable ward of the state’. It was the American Eugenics laws that provided the ‘scientific’ basis for the rise of Nazi Germany.

Though state sterilization laws have been removed from the books, institutionalized oppression against those who are not wealthy, healthy and white dove underground and still influences social and political policy today. ‘Perfection’ seeks to put a face and a heart to the continuing legacy of the Eugenics movement.