Not So Musical Monday: What the Constitution Means to Me
Author’s Note: Any and all thoughts and opinions in this piece are not my legal opinion as an attorney nor do they in any way reflect the opinion of any past, current, or future employer legal or otherwise.
The Constitution is perhaps the most cited document in the country and almost certainly the most misunderstood. People willingly say something is unconstitutional or say something is a right without knowing for sure. That isn’t an indictment on any one individual; people just broadly aren’t as familiar with the document as they should be. In law school, I of course studied the Constitution, and in becoming an attorney, I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me does a splendid job of teaching both the good and bad of the constitution while simultaneously making a funny, emotional show.
Over the course of a decade, Ms. Schreck has crafted an interesting combination of legal history lesson with personal and family stories woven together. It is framed as a speech given by the 15-year-old Ms. Schreck participating in a competition about how important the Constitution is (based on competitions Ms. Schreck actually used to compete in regularly.) The performance quickly becomes a blend of the hopeful 15-year-old Ms. Schreck and her more jaded contemporary self. The discussion of both the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments blends the promise of what these words should mean and the more somber reality of how often they don’t live up to these ideals. Ms. Schreck does this with such intensity and such a frenetic pace, stopping only for emotional emphasis and pause, that it never stops drawing the audience into her story. It is simply compelling theater.
Throughout the show, I could hear people around me audibly gasping at some of the facts Ms. Schreck would share about famous court cases and how they’ve either been misconstrued in what they actually said or actually were decided for potentially more nefarious reasons than what we’ve actually taken out of the case. It was well done and legally astute, and I could feel a lot of people around me really emotionally connecting to these reveals. I don’t think I felt that emotional connection because a lot of it was things I am either aware of or have worked directly with—there are huge issues with the equality of our legal system and with the application of justice in this country. We’ve made progress as a country, but there is progress still to be made. It’s important that people know this, and Ms. Schreck’s show I think can work to open a lot of minds and eyes. For better or worse, I don’t think as an attorney I was the exactly intended audience, and that is perfectly reasonable.
What the Constitution Means to Me drafts a delicate balance between being hopeful for progress and incredibly frustrated at the state of where we are. I will not spoil the last aspect of the show, as I think it is something better experienced than read about. It was definitely unexpected and thoroughly enjoyable. I think the overall mood to take away from Ms. Schreck’s piece is summed up wonderfully by a metaphor that Ms. Schreck attributed to her mother: progress is like watching a woman and a dog walk along a beach. If you focus only on the dog running ahead and back to the woman, then it will seem like we are consistently losing things gained. If you focus on the woman though, then you can see that with the ebbs and flows of progress things are still moving forward. That’s not a bad takeaway to take from an intelligent, well put together show.