What the Constitution Means to Me is a hybrid theatrical construct. Part performance piece, part drama, and part civics lesson, it somehow comes together as a whole, thanks to Heidi Schreck’s skill as a writer and Maria Dizzia’s prowess as an actress. The show, which earned two Tony Award nominations and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is now on tap at the Ahmanson as part of its national tour. Schreck, who played the lead role in New York, has turned that chore over to Dizzia, a wonderful replacement who has no trouble carrying the show on her shoulders. Schreck dipped into her own past while writing Constitution, recalling how she earned college scholarship money as a teenager by competing as an orator in contests having to do with the worthiness of the U.S. Constitution. That experience is replayed on Rachel Hauck’s American Legion hall set in Wenatchee, Wash., Schreck’s hometown. Mike Iveson plays the pompous Legionnaire who oversees the debate and enforces its rules. During the course of her speech in praise of the Constitution, Dizzia as Schreck also digresses and talks about her own life, growing up in a family of oppressed women. Her great-great-grandmother, we learn, came to the U.S. from Germany as a catalogue bride and died from melancholia at age 36; and her grand-mother was regularly beaten by her husband, a brute who also fathered two children with one of his daughters. The rights of women and by extension the question of reproductive freedom then becomes the main focus of Constitution. As Schreck points out, the Constitution failed to include women in its law-making and thinking. Women weren’t even allowed to vote until the 19th amendment was passed in 1920. And as for abortion, the older white men who traditionally served on the Supreme Court made it illegal until Roe-Wade finally became law. The political and ideological battles that have been, and still are, fought over these constitutional issues give the show its relevance; personal touches (such as Schreck revealing that she herself had an abortion) humanize it as well, making the abstract real. Flashes of wit and humor also help to enliven things. The play ends with Dizzia taking on a young girl (Rosdely Ciprian, alternating with Jocelyn Shek) in a verbal duel over the question of whether the Constitution should be preserved or abolished. The audience gets to vote nightly on the winner of the debate.
