What the Constitution Means to Me

Or: Feel, too, the roots and seeds

In the first few moments of the recording of What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schreck, playwright, performer, and host looks to be in need of a hug. Her mouth is often peeled back in toothy smile, her steps bound nervously from one side of the stage to another. She has constructed her hometown American Legion hall (surrounded by the benign gazes of men in uniform), to resurrect a tenant of her teenage years: the public debates she gave on behalf of the US Constitution to earn scholarship money. Complete with a stiff Legionnaire judge (Mike Iveson) she breathily captures the nail biting seconds of her fifteen year old self, summery and rebuttal and twining the personal around the political (as well as a deep abiding love for Patrick Swayze).

Schreck’s foundation then and her starting point now is that the Constitution is a living document, a toolbox that allows the citizens of these United States the opportunity to construct a better present and greater future for everyone. That it lives in a “penumbra” to quote her childhood favorite supreme court justice. Her eloquence is impeccable, here charm is radiant, but there is something lurking at the back of her mind, something that squirms around her memory of her fifteen year old self, that tangles her tongue and trips up her bounces (one of the brightest moments, and Schreck confides that it’s her favorite part too, of is when she gets to demonstrates her grandmothers profession of log runner, cavorting about and punting an imaginary raft of logs, while the Legionnaire looks on disapprovingly “He can’t stop me,” the playwright grins “I didn’t write anything for him to say!”)

That invisible force is, ever unsurprisingly, misogamy. It is the invisible poison that saps and diminishes and all too often kills every woman in this country (if not indeed the entire world). And as much as she may love the constitution and all its possibility, it is a document that does very little to ensure the rights of all citizens. If it is a toolbox it is one that is hopelessly unorganized, in the possession of clueless or downright malicious mechanics, and all too often, and for most of our history rusted shut.

Midway through the performance the veneer of youth peels away and Schreck gives it to us honestly (“My mouth f*#$ing hurts from all that smiling.”) and talks about the history of violence in her own family, as well as that of billions of women (going back all the way to Hammurabi) who’s well being was ignored or outright scorned by the governing laws. Her story is painful but it is merely the pie crust for the truth, served up cold and steely, (“Three women are killed every day in the United States by their partners, that’s not how many women are killed by men but how many women are killed by men who profess to love them.”)

What the Constitution Means to Me is a meticulously strutted show but is weave is the trellis for the wildness of true human emotion, full of stammers and verklempt gestures and sudden laughter at unexpected points). Schreck (and eventually Iveson) get down into the grit of their experience, confronting it with humor and wryness as well as clinical rage. But it is a kindling rather than destructive force, and it banishes the gloom of the present penumbra. It is so, so much more useful than doom scrolling on ones social media.

The last minutes of the play return us as Heidi goes head to head with two young women (Rosdely Ciprian and Thursday Williams, Aven Tavishel Nifty Name award contestant 2020) who would have been her appoints if she’d taken to the contest today. A view of the two debates will reveal suspicious similarities in the courses of arguments, but this only shows to highlight Schreck’s artistic skill and nothing to demote the passion and eloquence of her opponent. It is good medicine for the current climate of fear and inaction, for anyone who feels that the nation ought to step up, after two hundred and fifty years, and start taking of We The People, all of us.