During dark times in the Queen City, some community members wore masks to hide their bigotry in the 1920s and 1930s.
Then Staunton was not the “You belong here” city that we know today. Dr. Joseph DeJarnette was in charge from 1906 to 1943 at Western Lunatic Asylum where he carried out the unspeakable and unimaginable on innocent patients in the name of “genetic hygiene.”
Davey White and co-writer Diana Black, both of Staunton, through The Off Center, present “Degenerate: The DeJarnette Project” for six performances in September at the Staunton Augusta Art Center.
“What’s important to me is they were not allowed to tell their stories,” White said of Western State‘s patients who endured sterilizations in the name of perfecting the human race.
So he and Black tell stories on their behalf, including the story of a fictional patient named “Evelyn” brought to life by Marisa Strickler.
According to White, “Degenerate” is not a writer’s play, but an ensemble’s play, because he and Black have added to the script throughout the rehearsal process lines and details the actors have created. Actor Claire Josefson assists with puppetry. Jean Roche and Nat Slater round out the cast.
“It’s a movement play. It’s a visual play. It’s a carnival with a story inside,” White said of what he hopes audience members will find to be “uncomfortable fun.”
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However, White said that he, Black and the actors are not at the art center to tell a story that audience members will be swept up in.
“We’re here to come together as a community and to attempt to make a little bit of sense out of one of the most difficult parts of our collective history and legacy. There is so much erasure going on in the world, so much reframing of history,” White said.
Some American museums are being forced to stop sharing the truth of history.
“And, this is a way to come together and say we’re a loving community with a past that doesn’t match that and to remember it and to feel something about it and to take it with us and to move forward,” White said. “And, yeah, you might catch yourself having a little bit of fun in spite of yourself.”
Black began the dramaturgical research for “Degenerate” in December and was excited to write from the research.
“And the more I got into it, the more astonished I was that this part of our history isn’t common knowledge. There’s a vague idea of what took place, but hardly anyone I’ve spoken to knows the substance of what occurred. It’s been difficult for me to accept that we can’t squeeze every single thing people ought to know into our play,” she said.
According to Black’s research, approximately 1,700 compulsory sterilizations were performed at Western State on individuals who were considered unfit by authority figures, such as DeJarnette. Unfit individuals included patients with epilepsy, alcoholism, homosexual patients, women who had a child out of wedlock, women who had children who were so-called “mongrel” or mixed-race and if anyone in power chose to label you “feeble-minded.”
Eugenicists like DeJarnette wanted social control of the population.
“The idea that people only have worth if they meet certain conditions is so dangerous,” Black said.
In her research, Black found that the same thinking was used for the founding of Shenandoah National Park, an example of eugenic ideology taken to its logical conclusion.
In the 1930s, any landowners on the mountain who did not want to sell to the federal government for the creation of a national park in Virginia were “relocated,” or forcibly evicted and declared “intellectually deficient” and “inbred,” committed to asylums and sterilized.
“It’s a truly horrific story, and it stuns me that we don’t hear about this more. However, I also understand the impulse to remain in the dark because this knowledge prompts unpleasant thoughts like: ‘Well, now I have to feel bad about enjoying the park.’ And while I don’t think we need to feel guilty for enjoying the park, I do think we owe something of our attention and compassion to those who were harmed, to remember them, to know at least the basic contours of their stories,” Black said.
In 2025, Americans are witnessing the cherry picking and sanitizing of history at the Smithsonian Institute where individuals in power want to tell a “more desirable and convenient story.”
As Black points out, the problem is that the story will not be accurate to history.
“The rationale being given is, we can’t be proud of our history unless we hide or erase the painful parts. There’s this false idea that you can’t both love a place and be honest about wrongdoing in its past. It’s very important to me that at this much more local level, our history remains in full view. Without a complex, accurate picture of the past, we don’t know who we are or where we’re going,” Black said.
One character in “Degenerate” says that individuals at Western State are: “Anything that didn’t fit.”
“It feels different from other plays because, like a pop-rock musical, lots of fun in that respect,” said Maria Leckey, who, with Clutch Tuttle, has written and will perform original music they wrote for the production.
Leckey plays the accordion and Tuttle plays the banjo. They present five songs, including “D-minor Waltz” and “Bending Brains.”
“We kind of went off what was in the script,” Leckey said of their musical creativity.
With an Appalachian flair, Tuttle said they took direction from dramaturgists White and Black.
The production’s story weaves between then and now when the closing scene brings audience members back to 2025 and two young girls visit the art center. They have just toured what is now the Blackburn Inn, formerly known as Western Lunatic Asylum, and they cheer: “To our Staunton era. To Staunton.”
“Degenerate” will be staged at the Staunton Augusta Art Center, 20 S. New Street in downtown Staunton, at 7 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays, September 11 to 13 and September 18 to 20, 2025. Tickets are available online.
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Rebecca Barnabi
