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by Heidi Schreck, directed by Weyni Mengesha

Soulpepper & Nightwood Theatre with Necessary Angel & Talk Is Free Theatre, Young Centre, Toronto

November 1-10, 2024

Schreck: “Our Constitution is like a witch’s cauldron”

There is no more pertinent show running in Toronto now than What the Constitution Means to Me. Its run was meant to coincide with the US presidential election and that has proved to be prescient decision. If you are looking for insight into our strange neighbour to the south and the peculiarities of its founding document, see this show. It’s funny, it’s informative and it features a thoroughly engaging performance by Amy Rutherford.

Constitution is an unusual play – part autobiography, part lecture, part debate. The play begins with Rutherford introducing herself as Heidi Schreck, author and original performer of the play. Schreck tells us that as a teenager she used to travel to American legions across the US competing in speech contests about the Constitution. She won so much prize money this way she was able to fund her university education. The key point in these contests was for the contestants to show the Constitution affected them on a personal level.

After this introduction Schreck transforms into her 15-year-old self who is competing in an American Legion in her home town of Wenatchee, Washington, represented by a wall covered with framed portraits of war veterans. On stage with Schreck is a man in a military uniform who represents the veteran in charge of moderating the contest.

One of the main focusses of the contest is the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”. The point of this amendment was to make sure that just because a right was not listed in the Bill of Right did not mean that people did not have such a right. This amendment was used to justify the expansion of people’s rights to include marriage equality and of the right to abortion.

The question which Schreck as her older self emphasizes is that the Constitution is still subject to interpretation. The Supreme Court may interpret an action, like abortion, to be constitutional in 1973 and later unconstitutional in 2022.

As Schreck points out the Constitution and its Amendments were written entirely by White males, some of them slave-owners, and the nine members of the Supreme Court, whose role it is to interpret the Constitution, were all White until 1967 and all male until 1981. Schreck says it is not surprising that women are mentioned nowhere in the Constitution until 1920 in the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote.

The second focus of the contest is the second sentence of the 14th Amendment: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. The older Schreck points out that this Amendment may sound impressive but has seldom been acted upon in cases involving violence against women where women signally do not receive “equal protection”. Schreck mentions that the CDC has found that “1 in 4 women will experience physical violence by their intimate partner at some point during their lifetimes”.

This fact allows Schreck to elaborate on how this section of the Constitution has had a major personal impact upon her and her family since its lack of enforcement meant that generations of women in her family and their children suffered violence at the hands of their husbands and fathers. She begins with her great-great-grandmother, who in 1879 travelled from her native Germany to Washington state as a mail-order bride chosen from a catalogue. She died at age 36 in a mental hospital due to what was then termed “melancholia”. Schreck’s mother, grandmother and aunt were sexually or physically abused by their husbands. Schreck herself describes her own experience of an unwanted pregnancy and the difficulty of getting an abortion.

Schreck’s point is that she and her ancestors have direct experience of how the Constitution has no proviso for protecting women or giving women a say about their own bodies. Schreck plays a tape of the all-male justices attempting to debate a 1965 that would legalize contraception and it is obvious that the justices don’t have a clue what they’re discussing.

Amy Rutherford gives a glowing performance as the 15-year-old Schreck, full of optimism and unaware that some of her metaphors, such as comparing the Constitution to a “witch’s cauldron”, might have negative meanings she does not intend. Rutherford well contrasts the bubbly teenaged Schreck with the present-day Schreck, who knows how the Constitution has failed women and racial minorities and that even if it guarantees rights those rights can be rescinded by the Supreme Court. Rutherford gives a fully natural performance as both of Schreck’s selves where serious subject matter is judiciously tempered with humour.

For the entirety of Rutherford time on stage, she is being watched and listened to by the man playing the veteran moderating the contest. Schreck says during the show that she wants a man on stage to represent “positive male energy” since so much of what she discusses is the violence of men against women. In the original production this man was played by an out gay actor. In the present production it is also played by an out gay actor Damien Atkins.

Atkins makes the veteran a kindly, rule-obsessed presence who spends most of the play sitting in the downstage right corner watching and listening to Schreck in her two personae. Listening is not the same as doing nothing. In a play about men who are actively violent or who do nothing, the veteran’s listening is very important. Atkins knows how to give focus and if we happen to glance at his character while Schreck is speaking we immediately look back at Schreck because that’s where is gaze is intense fixed. The role becomes a model for a man who pays attention to a woman.

In the play Schreck, divests herself of her teenaged persona, and soon after that, of her role as Schreck entirely. The same happens with the Veteran. Rutherford introduces Atkins by his real name at which point Atkins stands up, takes off his military jacket and speaks to us as himself. Atkins was born in Australia and tells us what it was like growing up as a gay man there. The anecdote that relates most to Schreck’s theme is a story Atkins tells about having to rehearse a rape scene with a woman where he was told to do it “like you mean it”. This remark disturbing to him, but, as he admits, he never asked the female actor what she thought of it.

The end of the play is an actual debate, this time with Rutherford as herself debating a local high school student, 17-year-old Gabriella King. King is so smart, articulate and self-confident that she shows Gen Z in the best possible light besides simply being a remarkable person in her own right.

In the original play, the debate concerned whether or not to rewrite the US Constitution. Schreck has allowed the presenters of her play to Canadianize it by having the debate concern whether or not to rewrite Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The yea or nay sides are chosen by a coin toss and at the end one audience member is chosen to decide who has won. For anyone who has forgotten, the onstage debate demonstrates how rigorous and exciting high school debates can be. It also shows how far from this high standard televised debates between candidates for high office have fallen.

You leave the play intellectually entertained and much more informed about two important foundational documents newly made aware of their virtues as well as their flaws. We are entering a period where politics are going to become more intrusive than ever. It behooves our well-being to regard the changes that happen with as objective a mind as possible to recognize when our rights are threatened and how to act on this knowledge. Seeing What the Constitution Means to Me is an excellent way to prepare for the coming uncertainty.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Amy Rutherford as Heidi Schreck; Damien Atkins as Veteran; Gabriella King as herself. © 2024 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.soulpepper.ca.