What could be more a timely topic for inauguration week than the US Constitution? But this isn’t any old patriarchal take on our country’s founding document. This week on All Ears Abby talks to playwright and actress Heidi Schreck, creator of Tony-nominated Broadway hit, “What The Constitution Means To Me”. In the play, Heidi reflects back on her teenage experience as an award-winning orator, traveling the country to compete with other teens on the topic of the US Constitution. If anyone ever had a mad crush on a document, it was 15 year old Heidi. But she also looks at it as an adult woman, processing the generational trauma of domestic abuse in her family, and the impact of how our laws have been historically interpreted through the lens of the values and biases of the landowning white men who wrote it. Though Abby and Heidi grapple with our nation’s historical sins and its uncertain future, you will come out the other side of this lively conversation with a spark of optimism. Much like Inauguration 2021!
Special Guest
Heidi Schreck
American playwright, screenwriter, and actress
Heidi Schreck is a writer and performer living in Brooklyn. After an extended run on Broadway, What the Constitution Means to Me played a sold-out, limited run at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C as well as at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and will continue its national tour in 2021. What the Constitution Means to Me was named Best of the Year by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Time Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, The New Yorker and more; NPR named it one of the “50 Great Pop Culture Moments” of 2019. Schreck’s other plays Grand Concourse, Creature, and There Are No More Big Secrets have been produced all over the country and she has worked as a stage actor in NYC for almost 20 years. Her screenwriting credits include I Love Dick, Billions, Nurse Jackie and shows in development with Amazon Studios, Big Beach, Imagine Television and A24. As both an actor and writer she is the recipient of three Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and a Theatre World Award; as well as the Horton Foote Playwriting Award and the Hull-Warriner Award from the Dramatists Guild. She was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business in 2019 and was featured on Variety’s 2019 Broadway Impact List. Schreck was awarded Smithsonian Magazine’s 2019 American Ingenuity Award, for her work in the Performing Arts.
Episode Links
- What The Constitution Means To Me | Amazon Prime Video
- The American Legion Oratorical Contest (The American Legion)
- What The Constitution Means To Me's Heidi Schreck On Releasing The Movie During Another Supreme Court Battle (Slate)
- Coronavirus In New York: Some Women Must Face Childbirth Alone (LA Times)
- Griswold v. Connecticut (Oyez.com)
- Castle Rock v. Gonzalez (Oyez.com)