US Constitution became a revelation for Heidi Schreck as a teen — and later a playwright

“What the Constitution Means to Me” begins with Schreck’s 15-year-old self in awe of the Constitution and then moves into stories about her life and the lives of her mother, maternal grandmother and great-great-grandmother.

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Maria Dizzia stars in the national touring production of “What the Constitution Means to Me.”

Maria Dizzia stars in the national touring production of “What the Constitution Means to Me.”

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When playwright Heidi Schreck was a teenager, she was, like many of her age, a fangirl. But she wasn’t obsessing over a teen idol; she was fixated instead on the United States Constitution. Yes, you read that right. During four years of high school she took a deep dive into the Constitution via a nationwide contest sponsored by the American Legion.

What constitution means to me

‘What the Constitution Means to Me’

When: March 4-April 12

Where: Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut

Tickets: $30-$85

Info: broadwayinchicago.com


It began in 1986 when Schreck’s mother encouraged her to take part in the American Legion Oratorical Contest as a way to help pay for college. Students prepared an eight- to 10-minute speech examining personal connections between the document and their own life, which was followed by an extemporaneous presentation about an article or amendment blindly chosen. Schreck traveled around the country giving her speech at American Legion Halls.

“It started out very much as this thing my mom wanted me to do,” Schreck recalls. “By the end of the first year, I had become fully fascinated with the document and the ways it had been changed throughout time.”

Over the next three decades, Schreck, now 48, had a lot of time to think about her 15-year-old self and unwind her thoughts about the Constitution’s meaning to her and the women in her family, specifically in regards to the 14th amendment and its equal protection clause.

This rumination would become the basis for her Tony Award-nominated play “What the Constitution Means to Me,” now coming to Chicago for a 5-week run. (Schreck also is the author of “Grand Concourse,” staged in a lovely production at Steppenwolf Theatre in 2015.)

“It all began with just wanting to write about being a 15-year-old girl,” Schreck recalls, in a phone conversation from her Brooklyn home. “So I came up with the conceit to kind of recreate the contest and I started to think what it would be like to look at the personal connection between my life as an adult woman and the document.

Schreck, also an actor, played herself in the critically acclaimed Off Broadway and Broadway productions but she decided to not perform the show on the road; the touring company now features Maria Dizzia in the Schreck role.

“I feel it’s an important play because a lot of the time we talk about how the personal and political are connected but now this play really demonstrates how that is true,” Dizzia says, from Los Angles, the first stop on the tour.

The play begins with Schreck’s 15-year-old self in awe of the Constitution and then moves into stories about her life and the lives of her mother, maternal grandmother and great-great-grandmother. Her growing disillusionment with the document begins to unfold.

“I wanted to explore how the document affected the women in my family specifically because there is a history of domestic and sexual violence on my mom’s side of the family,” Schreck says. “So I was interested in what our laws have or didn’t have to say about that.”

She listened to many Supreme Court case having to do with women’s bodies and birth control, abortion and domestic violence and began to feel “that the Constitution doesn’t go far enough in considering women equal, it doesn’t go far enough in preventing discrimination, it doesn’t go far enough in protecting women.” And the more she worked on the play she realized “it just doesn’t protect human rights in general.”

While the play is very autobiographical and despite the fact that Schreck, who also writes for television (she is adapting the book “Priestdaddy” for Amazon), performed it for so long, she says she always intended it to be a play that someday other actors would perform. But she admits she wasn’t sure how that would work.

Schreck eventually handed the material to Dizzia, an actress who had coached her when she was first doing the show at New York Theatre Workshop: “I knew she understood the play deeply and I trusted her with the material.”

Yet Schreck also wanted there to be a moment in the play where Dizzia’s own story personal story to be told. That now comes near the play’s end, which features an act of civic engagement and debate (both Schreck and Dizzia were on the debate team in high school).

The debate, which is scripted but flexible, is key to keeping the play relevant, Dizzia says. “It’s the place where we can talk about current events and the immediate relevance of the Constitution.”

Dizzia says it’s been an interesting process to delve into the Constitution and current events before a live audience. She feels there’s a message there for all to see.

“There’s a great quote in the debate from (civil rights activist) Diane Nash — ‘Freedom is, by definition, people realizing that they are their own leaders.’ I hope the audience feels this sense of agency. That by engaging in politics and voting and expressing their needs and supporting the people who represent their needs, they can help create the America that takes care of all of us.”

Mary Houilhan is a local freelance writer.

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