Schreck has described the creative seed for the play as one “teenage girl’s bad romance with the Constitution” (Genzlinger), recounting, “I really did believe there was no greater democracy on the planet, and that this document was the most genius piece of political writing that had ever existed” (Shulman). During development, Schreck was advised by William Araiza of Brooklyn Law School (Schulman). As to form, she recalls that she wanted the play to lead her instead of trying to impose a traditional dramatic structure on it (Myers). After a miscarriage in 2014, Schreck took time to reflect and heal, during which she started to draw connections between her experiences of womanhood in the US and how that intersected with the Fourteenth Amendment, saying, “I had this sudden feeling of gratitude for my life, and gratitude for what had been afforded to me that hadn’t been afforded to my female ancestors. It was a very big turning point for me, and I began working on the show with a kind of fever. I suddenly understood what the show was about” (Schulman).
The play’s earliest iteration as a monologue she performed at a variety night at P.S. 122 in 2007 (Genzlinger; Schulman). A more developed version of the play was staged in 2017 by Clubbed Thumb Theatre Company (Genzlinger; Myers; Schulman) in the East Village, which paved the way for a transfer to the Greenwich House Theatre (Myers; Schulman), then to Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre before moving to the Kennedy Center – that last included a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution with each program (Genzlinger). She said of her Kennedy Center performance, “The debate was more electrifying than it has ever been. Both she and I realized that we were posing these questions about reimagining what our country might be before people who might actually have decision-making power” (Genzlinger). Like the idea that the US Constitution is a Living Document, so is the show, with elements changing night to night.
Original Cast (Schreck)
Heidi Schreck
Rosdely Ciprian
Danny Wolohan
Original Production Team (Schreck)
Director — Oliver Butler
Stage Manager — Ashley-Rose Galligan
Asst Stage Manager — Noah Silva
Costume Design — Michael Krass
Set Design — Rachel Hauck
Lighting Design — Jen Shriever
Sound Design — Sinan Refik Zafar
Works Cited
1. Genzlinger, Neil. “Heidi Schreck’s Riveting Play Deconstructs the U.S. Constitution.” Smithsonian Magazine, Dec. 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/heidi-schreck-riveting-play-deconstructs-us-constitution-180973500/. Accessed 28 Jul. 2025.
2. Myers, Victoria. “The Prophet Arrived: Heidi Schreck.” The Interval, 10 Dec. 2018, https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2018/12/the-prophet-arrived-heidi-schreck/. Accessed 28 Jul. 2025.
3. Schreck, Heidi. What the Constitution Means to Me. Theatre Communications Group, 2020.
4. Schulman, Michael. “Heidi Schreck Takes the Constitution to Broadway.” The New Yorker, 11 Feb. 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/heidi-schreck-takes-the-constitution-to-broadway. Accessed 28 Jul. 2025.