HEIDI SCHRECK knew she needed to talk about her abortion on stage. She became pregnant accidentally, and while on birth control, when she was 21, penniless and living in her parents’ basement in the small, conservative town of Wenatchee, Washington. Ms Schreck already knew she wanted a life different from the other women in her family. Her great-great grandmother came to the country as a mail-order bride and died in a psychiatric institution at the age of 36. Her great-grandmother had 18 children; her grandmother had six and a violent husband. Her own mother had hoped to move to New York and become an actor and a writer before she became pregnant, also at 21, in 1972—the same year birth control for single women finally became legal. Ms Schreck drove for eight hours to have an abortion at a feminist health collective in Oregon, and went on to have the career her mother once dreamed of.
This is just one of many personal stories she shares in “What the Constitution Means to Me”, an acclaimed production at the off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop through November 4th (it has been extended twice). Ms Schreck offers up these experiences to show how laws shape real lives, and how America’s constitution has affected—and often failed—the country’s citizens. The needs of women, for example, were blithely overlooked by the document’s framers. Women’s rights to vote and to control their bodies came only after years of protest and debate. Now, as a new conservative justice joins the bench, some of these gains may be under threat. “I think it’s important that women tell these stories,” she explains in an interview. “Getting an abortion was something I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to do. I don’t regret it.”
The play, which Ms Schreck wrote and stars in, is partly a tale of disillusionment. The playwright tells audiences she grew up believing “in the genius of this document”. Her winning speeches about it in high-school oratory competitions helped her pay for college. She knew the constitution was created by slave-owners who believed only white men were fully human, but she had faith in its ability to evolve over time. These views changed, however, when Ms Schreck started working on this play a decade ago. Time and experience made her more alert to the constitution’s narrow promises, and more troubled by the ways it has been interpreted by a predominantly white, male Supreme Court.
Directed with elegant understatement by Oliver Butler, the show begins with Ms Schreck reliving her precocious speechifying. She begins her idealistic spiel about the constitution as a “crucible” as if she was still a bright-eyed 15-year-old, but she regularly interrupts herself with the insights and digressions of a 40-something woman. A discussion of the human-rights protections guaranteed by the 14th amendment turns into a reckoning with a Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that found that women have no federal right to police protection from violent partners.
For Ms Schreck, this issue is personal, too. Her mother grew up in an abusive home, as did her grandmother and great-grandmother. Her step-grandfather broke her grandmother’s arm and nose and raped her aunt when she was 16. She tells audiences that 10m American women live in violent households, and that three are murdered each day by their partners. “What does it mean,” she asks, “that the document will not protect us from the violence of men?”
When Ms Schreck first performed this show in 2015, she was “terrified” to tell these personal stories before an audience. The second time, in 2017, she walked off the stage before she was meant to talk about the legacy of violence in her own family. “I didn’t realise how deeply I had internalised the taboo of talking about it,” she says. “I wanted to throw up.”
But the experience has become easier. “Just speaking these stories aloud every night has been cathartic for me,” she says. Audience members regularly tell her it was cathartic for them too, which has been emboldening. “It no longer feels traumatic to talk about this stuff,” she says. “It feels like I’m part of a larger act of storytelling that’s crucial right now.” The show’s timing has only enhanced its emotional resonance. Although the play has not changed much since 2015, she says it is flexible enough to adapt to new events. Ms Schreck continues to consult with a couple of constitutional scholars to make sure her interpretations are accurate.
The wonder of this play is the way in which Ms Schreck turns her analysis of the flaws of the constitution into a call to arms. She ends the show with a spirited debate with a brilliant teenager about whether or not to abolish the constitution. The effect is invigorating. Viewers are reminded that hard work, activism and arguments have expanded access to constitutional rights in the past, and suddenly the future seems malleable. Although working on this show was often distressing, Ms Schreck says it left her feeling optimistic. The constitution, for all of its shortcomings, “has also allowed us to move forward,” she says. “I hope a lot of people leave the theatre feeling hopeful and galvanised to do the work to change things.”