Review of the Show What the Constitution Means to Me
You know things are dire during Corona Times when yous find yourself sobbing over a piece of parchment—aka The Constitution of the United states. What's side by side? Rending my garments over the Nib of Rights?
That'south the effect Heidi Schreck's exuberant, angry, proud and patriotic play, What the Constitution Means to Me, has on a person.
In these fractious, anxious and violent times, Schrek's play— and the heaven-high spirit of her performance and those of the residuum of the bandage— causes a rebirth of what it means to be an American, crazy as that sounds, and is an illuminating exam of the Constitution as a living, animate certificate—flawed, majestic and still kicking.
Filmed by Marielle Heller during the play'southward last week of performances at the Helen Hayes Theatre in New York, What the Constitution Means to Me takes you on a fervently brainy joy ride through the Constitution—the practiced, the bad and the ugliness it has wrought on women and people of color.
Schreck'southward enthusiasm for the subject threatens to outburst through the screen, and you find yourself carried abroad on a moving ridge of fervor and facts equally she discourses on selected amendments.
In the play, Schreck resurrects her fifteen-yr-old cocky (afire in a xanthous blazer), as she raises money for college tuition giving speeches about the U.S. Constitution for the American Legion. A typical American Legion postal service is recreated for the production, with rows of photos of white men lining the walls.
The Constitution is not her just passion—she likewise likes kissing boys, Patrick Swayze, magic spells and the similar. Her teenage Constitution speech manages to weave magic and casting spells into the narrative, which is a stretch, albeit hilarious.
These moments of meeting her by cocky gives the show a lightness and authorization that is non mere nostalgia, but a reclaiming of power. It gives the audience release from the heavier—but never pedantic—aspects of the play, namely, the violent effects this founding document has had on generations of women and people of color.
At an early function in the bear witness, Schreck brings upward the word "penumbra," which she says is the shadowy space between the lighted phase and the darkness of the audience. 'Penumbra,' she notes, is also how Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas described the Ninth Amendment, the most shadowy and misinterpreted part of the Constitution. Justice Antonin Scalia once said he didn't think studying it in law schoolhouse. Yet information technology is the subpoena that allows the establishment of new rights.
Schreck's play and performance is dedicated to the penumbra, the shadowy identify our Founding Fathers trundled many people off to—women, Black people, Native Americans, waves of immigrants. A certificate where the word "women" does not appear and where women and people of colour are unrepresented, unprotected, and unvalued. We exist in this penumbra, seeing the illumination in front end of us but unable to footstep into the light.
Including the women in Schreck's family unit. She recounts generations upon generations of violence and trauma, including her great-great grandmother who was ordered from a German post-order bride catalog for $75 and who died of 'affective' in her early on 30s; also equally her grandmother, who stayed in her second union to a wife and kid beater who also raped her daughter from her showtime marriage.
Schreck's female parent grew upward in that violent household and her kickoff memory is of her stepfather socking her mother in the face. She and her sister later testified confronting the stepfather when her mother would not.
In Shreck's hands, these are not sob stories or tales of victimization. Threaded with astute constitutional theory and research besides as spoken quotes by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (if that doesn't bring a lump to the throat, nothing will), her stories illustrate how our laws and amendments ignore or exclude women, rendering them worthless and without command of their own bodies and what happens to them.
Heavy going, merely the rigor and passion Schreck brings to the Constitution and institutionalized violence never feels burdensome—information technology's no mystery as to why the play was nominated for a Tony and was a finalist in the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Because what Schreck brings u.s. is promise. Hope that the Constitution will evolve into something that is for all the people. Hope that new amendments will be passed to lighten the penumbra.
Most importantly, hope for time to come generations. This comes in the course of two New York Urban center high school debaters, Rosdely Ciprian and Thursday Williams, who alternated performances in the live production in a fence with Schreck about whether we should fix the Constitution or tear it up and beginning over. On Amazon Prime, I saw Ciprian, and her poise, erudition on the Constitution and social issues—not to mention her rip-roaring fervor—gave me happy tears and a feeling that the future is bright.
What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck . Filmed for Amazon Prime Video by Marielle Heller . Featuring: Heidi Schreck, Mike Iveson, with high school students Rosdely Ciprian and Thursday Williams alternating performances in the New York productions. Reviewed by Jayne Blanchard.
Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video
Source: https://dctheatrescene.com/2020/10/20/review-what-the-constitution-means-to-me-streaming-on-amazon-prime-exuberant-angry-proud-and-patriotic/
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