STAGE: What the Constitution Means to Me

Our Constitution, written over 200 years ago, is the most long-lived written constitution in history, and remains perhaps one of the few things nearly all Americans can agree on revering, even as we disagree sometimes vehemently on the specifics of its interpretation. That reverence and that tension are at the heart of the show What the Constitution Means to Me, an autobiographical memoir by Heidi Schreck, who recreates her experience as 15-year old girl delivering competitive speeches on the Constitution at VFW halls for scholarship prizes, then breaks into her present-day 45-year old self to make some more mature reflections on our founding document. Schreck performed her own play for a highly-regarded run in New York, while actress Maria Dizzia has very capably stepped into the role of “Heidi Schreck” for the touring production that we saw at the Mark Taper. In the first part, 15-year old Heidi breathlessly and enthusiastically expounds on her favorite amendments, the Ninth and the Fourteenth (admittedly some of my favorites too), and makes a personal connection (as was required by the contest rules) to her great-grandmother, a German immigrant mail-order bride. There is little to none of a “fourth wall” in this play. Heidi begins by addressing the audience, Shakespeare prologue style, asking us to engage in the re-enactment by pretending to be elderly men in a late 1980s VFW hall. While being “15-year old Heidi”, she occasionally pops out of character for a bit of commentary. This happens more and more, until at some point she drops the 15-year old altogether, and just talks to us directly as herself with 30 years more life experience. (There is some amusing playfulness with theatrical conventions around these transitions, like pointing out that she forgot to include a door in her recreation of the VFW stage, and poking fun at a secondary character who is stranded on the doorless stage when she decides, seemingly impromptu, to drop the fourth wall.) Here is where it gets more interesting as idealization of the Constitution gives way to a more mature realization of its imperfections and limitations as she confronts her own reproductive decisions, as she learns some shocking history of abuse endured by her mother, aunt, and grandmother, and as she rethinks what may really have befallen her immigrant great-grandmother who died at 36 of “melancholia”. The mature Heidi comes to question how well a 232-year old document can give women and other unprotected groups their due when the document doesn’t even mention them, and didn’t even originally envision them as included as citizens nor even as “the people”. At this point, the only logical next step is to stage a debate on the proposition to keep the Constitution or to abolish it and start over. A precocious actual 14-year old girl then comes on stage to engage in a lively debate with Heidi for the final part of the show, but not before putting the audience into the right frame of mind by dividing us with a thought-provoking show of hands. The debate is rapid-fire and compelling, and the winner, as judged by a random audience member, could be different on any given night. It certainly leaves you with something to think about. My favorite quote: "Justice Scalia said that he couldn't tell you what the Ninth Amendment meant if his life depended on it. And I guess it didn't." (The line is an early comic toss-off but with more profound meaning in the larger context of the play.)

Oh, and I forgot to mention the bonus: everyone in the audience was given a pocket Constitution to keep!