What the Constitution Means to Me

The play grapples with the way that our rights are always changing.

A story for you from What the Constitution Means to Me.

It's all coming up on The Gateway.

The U.S. Open Cup is coming home to St. Louis.

It can be seen Friday and Sunday at Two Hill Performing Arts Center.

I'm Andrea Henderson, St. Louis Public Radio.

What the Constitution Means to Me is a play based on playwright Heidi Schreck's high school job winning cash prizes and debates about the Constitution at American Legion Halls.

A production of the show is now on stage at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, directed by Nancy Bell.

Mm-hmm.

at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, What the Constitution Means to Me.

This is one of their studio series.

So in there, underneath the main stage is a studio theater.

No, it's there.

Trust me, it's there.

So what the Constitution means to me has been a little bit of a mini phenomenon since it came out.

The playwright, Heidi Schreck, It's her story, her musing about her experience as a constitutional debate scholar.

Yes, okay.

As I said, we're in our 14th season, so our opening play is What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck, and I'm directing it.

We thought this was a perfect time for this play, our 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence and right before the midterm elections.

Very

This is a true story.

And she won enough to earn her college tuition.

And so these contests, they would ask them first to... talk about they would give them about what the constitution means to me and they would say you have to make it personal and then they ask them to draw with they don't know which one they're going to draw an amendment out of a can and then they extemporaneous speech speak about it but it sounds kind of dry but it's not it's funny it's poignant she relates these things that happened in her life her mother's life her grandmother's life Two, she intertwines it into the Constitution I'm talking about.

When did women get the right to vote? All these amendments that came along that they didn't think about when they first wrote the Constitution.