About halfway through the local production of the Tony-nominated play, What the Constitution Means to Me, I felt such a swelling in my chest, such a wave of recognition and gratitude, that I had to blink fast to keep tears from smearing my view of professional actor Stacy Stoltz on stage. My body didn’t quite know how to respond to the brilliant personal-as-political insights, and, as if a yoga class had been put in a Vitamix, I found myself nodding, shaking my head, laughing, sighing, and trying to catch my breath almost all at once.
The show’s hook is that the playwright earned college money as a teenager in fast-paced debate competitions at American Legion halls on the topic of “What the Constitution Means to Me.” The spare but clever set design evokes those halls, adorned with flags and repeating rows of framed photos of military men. The skillful time-travel between the protagonist’s past and present, brought to life with Chicago actor Stacy Stoltz’s dazzling physicality, offers so many pop cultural delights — and plain old belly-laughs — while laying down cultural truths I hope we’re brave enough to pick up. After all, the play asks explosive questions: What’s still urgent in that aged document, the Constitution? Should we abolish it, and start over? The Civic Theatre and the University of Notre Dame are producing more shows for only five dollars until October 1 at the St. Joseph County Public Library, and IU South Bend will host the production in November.
Heidi Schreck’s mostly one-woman play will be the most produced play in the U.S. next year, and with the Dobbs Supreme Court decision now sending tremors through state elections, I can see why. Not that the play is about abortion. It’s about … well, it’s about so much, but mostly it asks the question: What does the US Constitution mean for those of us who were not so much on the founders’ minds — women, people who were enslaved, poor people, people of color? And at a very visceral level, the play explores, with winning humor and warmth, what this “living, breathing” document meant — and could not mean — to four generations of women in the playwright’s family: a millworker, a mail-order bride, victims and survivors of violence, those who were silenced, and those who decided that silence could no longer be bourn.
The play is a maestra class in how to ask questions of a document that was created to be amendable, because for all their shortcomings, the founders had some insight that “Who we are now is not who we might become" — a theme that reverberates in the show, and for any living being.
And yet: Historian Jill Lepore has made the point that the U.S. Constitution is also notoriously one of the most difficult to amend. And, significantly, we seem to have frozen in place with the decades-long attempt to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Lepore sees ERA’s failure as the “linchpin” of our current political polarization, a claim I’ve been pondering since seeing Heidi Schreck’s play. A key problem, Lepore says in aNew Yorker Radio Hour interview, is that “Americans are pretty terrified of sitting down and talking to one another about any fundamental questions about how we should organize our political lives.” Her interviewer, David Remnick, asks, “Why is that?” And she replies, “Because we have lost the habit of doing so.”
That hoped-for dialogue, that desire to restart that habit, is what drew me to participate in the “One Small Step” initiative, which I also recommend to you — yes, you, fellow listener, putting your coffee cup to your lips or gripping a steering wheel! After I filled out a brief survey, I was matched with Joy, a woman of faith and service who lives in the Detroit area. Our conversation, structured to “lead with curiosity” is now on theStory Corps website.While different beliefs animated our community advocacy, we found more in common than not, particularly when Joy said she’d learned from a career in nursing, and from her parents, to see everyone with “individual consideration.”
The power of the personal stories Joy and I shared, animated by different perspectives, is of a piece with the play What the Constitution Means to Me, testing big truths with personal experience and deep emotion. With elections on the horizon, there’s no better time to consider who we are now and, if we wanted it enough, who we might become.
Music: "Shake It Out" by Florence and the Machine
