What the Constitution Means to Me

At fifteen, Heidi Schreck travelled around the United States competing in speech contests about the Constitution and paid for college with the prize money. Years later she rebuilds that contest on stage and asks how much of what she said then she still believes. The film is not interested in a lesson in law. It is interested in who the text protects and who it does not: by telling the story of the violence the women in her own family lived through, Schreck reads the Constitution from inside private life. The document stops being abstract. The form is a record of theatre: this is a filmed performance of Schreck's Broadway show. Marielle Heller puts the camera among the audience and does not break the live rhythm of the play. The last section is not fixed. Schreck brings a real high school student on stage and they hold a live debate on whether the Constitution should be kept. The audience decides the winner at every performance. Who it is for: viewers interested in political theatre and in a personal entry into American legal history. Who it is not for: anyone expecting cinema. This is a recorded play and is almost entirely one person talking.