WHEN YOU WALK into the theater, you feel you’re at an American Legion community center, with hundreds of framed male portraits lining the walls. It’s a little daunting. And then Heidi Schreck as a young woman arrives to give her speech, “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
She explains that this is how she raised her state college tuition: winning speech and debate competitions about the Constitution, taking on the male power structures that surrounded her. Our 230-year-old Constitution is a wordy and tricky document, to say the least, and Schreck steps up to it with delightful rhetoric, full presence, and comic genius. She shows us why we should be in love with it and why we should uphold it.
But then things shift, and she comes to us, blazer tossed aside, as a now-40-something woman with wisdom and deep questions. The second half of the play takes us on a whirlwind history of the document with all of its problems, especially how this male-conceived, male-written constitution suppressed and continues to suppress women. Sitting quietly at the side, and sometimes explaining the rules of the speech debate competition, is an American Legion representative, played on Broadway by Mike Iveson.
He listens and observes as Schreck moves through tales about her abused grandmother, her own navigation of women’s rights, and the basic lack of protections for women in the U.S. The history of domestic violence in her family consistently lurks under the surface of this play, and she links it with why the Ninth Amendment is so important: It says that the rights mentioned in the Constitution “shall not be construed to deny or disparage” any rights not named there. In other words, we have rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution that may not be violated.
It is this amendment, she teaches us, that led to advancements such as the women’s right to vote, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the interpretation of the Constitution to uphold gay rights. But is it enough? She wonders with us and allows us to wonder back.
Leading us to the play’s final moments, Schreck brings onstage a current female New York City high school student to debate her about whether or not we need a new constitution. They draw lots for the pro and con sides and then, live in front of us, construct arguments and present them in the style of the American Legion Oratorical Contest. It’s a brilliant moment that ends differently every performance.
“What the Constitution Means to Me” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. It didn’t win either, but it’s winning hearts and minds on Broadway. Now, the play’s producers have announced a national tour, beginning in 2020. Don’t miss it when it comes to your town.
Stephanie Sandberg is an assistant professor of theater and film studies at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. Her most recent work is Stories in Blue: A Pilgrimage to Heal Human Trafficking, which follows the stories of six survivors of sex trafficking.
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