‘What the Constitution Means to Me’ to Open on Broadway in March
New York Times — Jan. 14, 2019
By Michael Paulson
“What the Constitution Means to Me,” Heidi Schreck’s autobiographical play that uses a childhood speech and debate competition to explore the treatment of gender in American legal history, will transfer to Broadway this spring.
Ms. Schreck, a writer and performer in television as well as theater, has been working on the play for years, and stars in it. Clubbed Thumb staged a production during its Summerworks festival in 2017; that was followed by Berkeley Repertory Theater last spring, New York Theater Workshop last fall, and then an extension of that production at the Greenwich House Theater.
The show, which also features another actor (Mike Iveson) and a New York City high school student debater (Rosdely Ciprian and Thursday Williams, alternating), will play at the Helen Hayes Theater, Broadway’s smallest house (the theater is owned by a nonprofit, Second Stage, which is renting the building to this play’s commercial producers for the run). It is scheduled to begin previews March 14, to open March 31 and to close June 9.
The play, based on Ms. Schreck’s experience as a high school student giving speeches about the Constitution to earn tuition money for college, is directed by Oliver Butler, and the Broadway run is being produced by Diana DiMenna, Aaron Glick and Matt Ross.
The current Broadway season has been characterized by an unusually healthy crop of ambitious, timely plays; this is the 21st play to announce a production this season. It is the third of those plays written by a woman; the others were “Bernhardt/Hamlet,” by Theresa Rebeck, and “Straight White Men,” by Young Jean Lee.