What the Constitution Means to the Playwright Heidi Schreck

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2019

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Few Americans dispute the centrality of the Constitution as a statement of our country’s goals; it is as though holy. But what the Constitution actually means to any two people may differ widely, and those differences are dramatized in a new play, on Broadway, called “What the Constitution Means to Me.” It’s essentially a one-person show written and performed by Heidi Schreck (profiled in The New Yorker by Michael Schulman), and it’s her first play to reach Broadway. The performer reflects on her personal history as a high-school debate champion, when she was rewarded for upholding an officially sanctioned view of American politics that she has come to realize is a distortion. Both the play and Schreck’s performance have been nominated for Tony Awards; it’s a hit, and it’s a cultural flashpoint in an era when the phrase “constitutional crisis” is invoked almost weekly. Dorothy Wickenden spoke with Heidi Schreck. Plus, SoundCloud rap—once a marginal, willfully weird genre for amateurs—has lately created some of the biggest hits in hip-hop.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:09.7	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. What the Constitution means to me is the title of a one-person show written and performed by Heidi Shrek. It was also the title of a speech that Shrek
0:21.5	a very long time ago at high school speech contests. Her show is on Broadway now, and it's something
0:28.1	of a surprise hit. In the play, Shrek talks about the protections that the Constitution guarantees,
0:33.8	and also the lack of protections, and how those policies shaped her life in her family's history.
0:39.8	What the Constitution means to me has been nominated for two Tony Awards, and it's become a kind
0:45.0	of cultural flashpoint in the era of William Barr, Brett Kavanaugh, and Donald Trump.
0:52.2	The fact is, there was no way for the framers to put down every single right we have.
0:57.0	I mean, the right to brush your teeth.
0:59.0	Yes, you've got it, but how long do we want this document to be?
1:03.0	Here's another example.
1:05.0	When I was a little girl, I had an imaginary friend named Reba McIntyre.
1:09.0	She was not related to the singer.
1:11.5	Just because the Constitution does not proclaim the having of imaginary friends as one
1:16.3	of my rights does not mean I can be thrown in jail for being friends with Reba McIntyre.
1:21.0	Isn't that amazing?
1:22.5	Think about it for a moment.
1:23.9	Our Constitution doesn't tell you all the rights that you have because it doesn't know.
1:30.5	Dorothy Wickenden, who hosts the New Yorker's political scene podcast, spoke with Heidi Shrek.
1:35.6	Thank you so much for joining me on a day where you should be sort of kicking back and relaxing before your show tonight.
1:41.8	Thank you. I'm very excited to talk with you. So I saw the
1:45.9	play last week, and I really haven't been able to stop thinking about it. We talk about political
	...

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