Heidi Schreck’s theatricalized lecture-hall debate session seemed provocative and curiously entertaining when it opened off-Broadway at New York Theater Workshop on September 30, 2018. By the time it transferred to Broadway—where it opened at the Helen Hayes on March 31, 2019—current events had further caught up with it, making the play dangerously relevant rather than a theoretically academic intellectual exercise. Today, as a filmed version of the Hayes production premieres on Amazon Prime Video, it pretty much serves as a flashing catastrophe alert. Danger Ahead no longer; today it’s simply Danger!!!
The conceit is simple. Schreck impersonates her younger self, who at 15—back in the good old days of the first Bush administration—started debating Constitutional issues at American Legion Hall assemblies as a way to earn enough prize money to finance her college tuition. We watch her plow her way through an enthusiastically awkward presentation, stoked with charm and good-natured humor. Until the moment young Heidi, trying to explain “what the constitution means to me,” runs head-on into thorny issues. Which in her case have to do with how the legal protections written into the document where not seen as impediments to the severe domestic abuse suffered by her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.
Thus, we move from the dry pages of history to life as we know (or knew) it yesterday. And today.
Schreck, a previously little-known actor who is so likeably ingratiating that one might tend to overlook the fact that her script is meticulously and cannily crafted, is so winning that we are happy to believe every word she says and support every argument she makes. After which she crosses us up by inviting a contemporary high-school student to debate her—and in some ways outdebate her—on whether the 230-year-old Constitution should be preserved or replaced. The debate is partially improvised; an audience member chooses who should argue which side, and over my several in-theater viewings of the play the discussion changed to reflect current events.
That said, Schreck has so well organized matters that the teenaged debater proves more than a match for her 40-something self. Two girls alternated in the role through the New York runs of the play. In the film, we get Rosdely Ciprian, who has the fire and the smarts to outdebate any politician who might foolishly stray in her path. Her counterpart, Thursday Williams, also gets some screen time in the curtain call section. Having seen both Ciprian and Williams on stage, I can attest that they are equally powerful thinkers and debaters, and we can only hope that one or both finds herself in Congress when they hit 25 in 2030.
Sharing the stage with Schreck and the young debater(s) is Mike Iverson, playing the crotchety legionnaire-host of the event until such time as the author pulls him out of his oldtimer guise and allows him to discuss his true self. Oliver Butler’s all-but-invisible but impeccable staging is retained, with Marielle Heller directing for film.
When she started developing the project during the Obama years, Schreck couldn’t have known where we were heading, and given that What the Constitution Means to Me was filmed live on August 21, 2019, one can’t accuse the author of going back to nudge the discussion toward where we are today.
Literally today, as the Supreme Court is embattled past imagining. Our world has so changed in the last year, the last months, and even this week, that Schreck—who has been polishing her constitutional debate speech since 1989—couldn’t have possibly imagined the unimaginable. Although it should be noted that the play first opened at NYTW the week of the final Kavanaugh hearing.
Or could she? one wonders, as she argues “we should not throw out the Constitution, we should throw out the men who abuse it.”
What the Constitution Means to Me, a filmed version of the 2019 Broadway production, will be streamed beginning October 16, 2020, at Amazon Prime Video
