Last and fall and this spring I was fortunate to do the dramaturgical work
for the Idaho Repertory Theatre’s production of “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
The award-winning play is humorously and intelligently and deeply written by Heidi Shreck. In it, she enacts and reflects on her connection to the U.S. Constitution and the role it plays in her life, her mother’s life, and her grandmother’s life.
Her play begins with the American Legion Oratorical contests she competed in as a 15-year-old girl living in Wenatchee, Washington. The contest’s prize money paid Schreck’s way through college, and as importantly, affected her as a person.
This potent and flawed document is framed through a lens of Heidi Schreck’s creating. She contrasts her views of it as a 15-year-old and a 30-year-old. Her ideas, needs, and wants have changed as well as her sense of what is right. Shreck herself is drawn in by her memories and the Constitution itself as she interacts with the audience and reflects on this foundational document. What does it means in our time, two hundred years after the writing?