This story is featured in CityBeat's Sept. 6 print edition.
In the contentious world of politics in 2023, our American Constitution is often a tangled thicket to dive into. Many people don’t have a firm grasp of what it says, where it came from and how it should be applied to our nation today. As a 15-year-old debater, playwright Heidi Schreck traveled to numerous American Legion halls where she delivered an award-winning speech about her sense of America’s founding document. The cash awards she collected at these outings financed her college education at the University of Oregon.
Schreck went on to a career as an actor and writer. She spent a decade converting her adolescent experience into an endearing and unusual play, What the Constitution Means to Me, a civics lesson disguised as theatrical entertainment. She performed it on various stages in New York City in 2017 and 2018, winning an award from the Dramatists Guild of America and drawing audiences that included Gloria Steinem and Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton. In 2019 it moved to Broadway, running for a few months until the COVID pandemic shut everything down. Nevertheless, her script was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and nominated for a Tony Award. Amazon turned it into a streaming production that aired on its Prime platform during the runup to the 2020 presidential election. But Schreck’s stage show, in the form of Heidi’s adult recollections about her teenage experience, is surely most powerful in a live performance. That’s what local audiences can see at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (ETC) later this month.
“I’ve been looking at this show for five years,” says D. Lynn Meyers, ETC’s artistic director, in a news release about the show. “The Constitution was a document that was meant to unify our new nation when it was written. When I heard about this play, I thought it was such a great idea to dive into how this document has morphed, changed and amended over the years the same way our country has. This show is a love letter to what our nation has aspired to be, what it has failed to be in some ways, and what it possibly can become.”
Professional actor Connan Morrissey is stepping into the role of Heidi as an adult and a teenager. She previously appeared in ETC productions of A Doll’s House, Part 2 (2019) and Pipeline (2020). In a recent phone conversation with CityBeat, Morrissey said, “I think Lynn is really smart about presenting this for an Ohio audience. It’s about all the questions that we are asking ourselves politically. But it does it in a way that is appealing and funny. It allows a window into what is so powerful about being an American and why the Constitution is a kind of sacred document to us.”
Morrissey points out how Schreck’s talents as both an actress and writer benefit the play. “She has that fabulous language that is connected to her adolescent self, and her adolescent belief in the document comes through. For so many of us, the Constitution seems aloof, dry, complex legal language. Her play kind of breaks it down so an audience can understand it.” There’s no need for a legal scholar to translate.
In the play’s second act, Heidi matches wits with another high-school debater (played by Sydni Charity Solomon, a senior in UC’s College-Conservatory of Music’s acting program). “That’s actually part of the magic of the show,” Morrissey says. “She recreates a contest and asks the audience to take on the part of the old white guys who were her American Legion audiences. Two hundred and thirty-four years ago the framers of the Constitution were all white men, who never thought about anyone but themselves, mostly landowners and some slaveholders.” Inviting the audience to listen to a young person and consider arguments for a new perspective is disarming, even for people who might think it’s wrong today to tinker with the Constitution.
Morrissey says, “The title of the play is ‘What the Constitution Means to Me.’ But the question Schreck is asking is, ‘What does it mean to you?’ What is worth fighting for in your life today? Is it about protection under the law for all of us? Is it about Native American rights and how they were completely left out of the Constitution? Is it about some sort of religion? What is important to you? The point is that we are all in this together, and we have to work together to make tomorrow a better place for us.” That’s how we continue to advance toward a “more perfect union,” as the Constitution tells us.
The young debater represents another generation, one who understands the Constitution and is hopeful about making it work in the future. Morrissey shares this optimism, citing the recent example of young people in Montana who won a landmark lawsuit about the state failing to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects.
“I hope people come and laugh,” Morrissey says about this engaging piece of theater, being staged by local director Brian Robertson. Schreck cites some of her female ancestors and how America treated them. Morrissey hopes those stories cause audience members to “reflect on their own family’s journey in this country, whatever perspective they come from — how Black folks have made their way in this country, to German immigrants, to all our citizens.” She adds, “I hope they are all registered to vote! It’s about being empowered and wanting to get involved.” That’s what the Constitution should mean to all of us, and that’s the lesson of Heidi Schreck’s important play.
What the Constitution Means to Me, presented by Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, opens on Sept. 13 and continues through Oct. 1 at 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine. Info: ensemblecincinnati.org.
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