What the Constitution Means to Me: The Words of the Founders Arouse Emotions

What exactly does the American Constitution mean to you?

A first answer may be definitive, it is our founding legal document, expressing all of the principles governing our nation. Another may be a quick qualitative assessment, which it represents a really great enumeration of rights, since we (as in those who grew up in America) have all been informed of its inviolate greatness.

But that doesn't express what it means to you personally.

Playwright Heidi Schrek has pondered this question since she was 15 years old, when she accumulated university scholarships by participating in American Legion speech contests on the subject of the Constitution . And she transformed her vision of the legal framework of our nations into a modest but intelligently structured, often funny, powerfully provocative, even emotional game, What the Constitution Means to Me, which shockingly became a Broadway success and a national tour, currently playing at the Broadway Playhouse.

At first, she reconstitutes her adolescent point of view on the Constitution, informed with humor and retrospective by her obsession with the young for Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing Schreks. The play gradually presents to us his ripe opinions, emphasizing his belief that since its creation the Constitution has been used to suppress the rights of many, and that to her it largely represents the means by which fully autonomous men submit women to their all too often violent will.

This is a fiercely progressive but well argued point of view, supported by an account not only of one or two Supreme Court cases (see, in particular Castle Rock v. Gonzalez, which undermined the ; enforcement of restraining orders), but also of her family with a history of domestic violence and her own early pregnancy.

What the Constitution Means to Me Becomes A Both Intellectual And Emotional Journey From Idealism To Disenchantment Towards An Ambitious Type Of Realism, Embodied In Debate, With A Real World Debating Teenager No Equal supernaturally on press night, Rosdely Ciprian on others), on the maintenance or abolition of the Constitution. To represent some problems with our democracy, the winner is judged by a single member of the public.

As a play, the work is a fascinating hybrid form. It starts as a piece of memory, with a fun introduction to the whole by Rachel Hauck, a paneled room in an American Legion office, with dozens of portraits of members on the wall, all white men, well sure. The work also apparently belongs to the genre of one-person shows, but it is not one. In addition to Sheks' debater, actor Mike Iveson skillfully plays host to Legionnaire competitions, which introduces teenage girl Heidi and keeps her setting deadlines. Iveson then abandons this character and plays himself, a friend of the playwright emanating from a gentle warmth, of a male variety, even as Schrek condemns male violence and the legal system which fails to Prevent. Iveson delivers a monologue, which for me turned out to be the only snapshot of an evening that was anything but.

Schrek is playing with the artifice of the theater itself I kind of forgot a door, she said about the whole. At the end of her memory of the competition, she throws away her structured blazer and informs us that she will only be 30 years old.

This touring production, directed with discreet fluidity by Oliver Butler, has an extra layer of artifice: although Schrek played the part on Broadway, she is here represented by actress Maria Dizzia. Dizzia perfectly captures the right tone, which can be humorous, disarming, angry, intelligent and poignant, sometimes simultaneously. The show makes me want to see it with Schrek herself, especially for the moments when the anecdotes cause brief tearful pauses, which must manifest differently when the memories belong to the artists, but none of that takes away to the captivating presence of Dizzias.

Few parts can deal with complex legal concepts of criminal law! in a completely accessible but not reductive way, an incredible achievement in itself. And the timeliness of this piece cannot be separated from its success. Without any direct mention of you-know-who, the very existence of the work belongs to the moment and takes on an additional urgency in a week when arguably the most qualified woman has abandoned the presidential race.

Schrek ends by looking to the future. With the introduction of a contemporary adolescent debater, she leaves us with immense hope, for the future of women, for our democracy, and even, yes, for our imperfect constitution.

Steven Oxman is a local freelance writer.