What the Constitution Means to Me

Amazing & poignant! Ms. Schreck delivers a spot on performance with grace and style.

From the title you can see I was misled. I kinda got it, it would be a reflection on what a young person would think about the Constitution and how it may change over time.

It is really just this lady's rant, and boiler plate Feminist complaints about how terrible history, and especially the U. S. , has treated women.

My complaint is that it falls into a very large pile of stories. We live in open and progressive times in which women are treated equally and U. S. women have more freedom of action and freedom of expression than ever in history. Indeed, far and beyond women in 90% of the planet. Artists and writers seem to find nothing to complain about in the 21st C, so they will go back and tell never-ending stories about how awful the world/U. S. used to be.

This falls into that pile.

As a piece of art? It is lecturing, it is strident, it is biased, it is unfair and many parts of it seem false. Why false? She seem to set her speech in mid-1990s? When she was 15 years old? All of the commentary is about the 1800s - turn of the century? What are her credentials/experience?? She discusses having difficulty finding birth control? In the 1990's? Her excerpts from 'her speech' are so bad and so goofy that I can't believe the premise of the show. "Heidi" didn't win any speech contest.

Also, it is a stage production. I like live drama. This has very sloppy delineation between the setting and the story/drama. Fourth Wall? It is just a rambling lecture and has little artistic presentation, nor consistent style.

It could have been better if it were shorter, if it had stuck with its setting in the Foreign Legion Contest of 1990s, and if the author/performer had presented ideas and let the audience think/respond about them- instead of telling the audience what to think.

It has been about a year since I got to watch live theater, which is WAY too long. This movie actually captures the experience pretty darn well - the voices, the audience, the energy. Schreck's show somehow takes us all on a journey through her adolescence, our nation's history, and this difficult current moment all at once. it is not a perfect film, or even really a film at all. But it is a pretty darn good play, especially if you have kids who love Hamilton and are ready for the next conversation.

It pains me to write this review, and I don't know what I expected. The content and stories told in this play are heart-wrenching, but the way it's shown and the decision to film this as a live taping with audience chiming in really made me stop halfway. I'd rather read an article about the ordeals that the protagonist faced (and I'll probably like them too), but watching this as a 1 hr 45 min drama is a chore, more so with audience laughing in between which gives the feeling that laugh track in a sitcom gives. Hamilton as a movie made sense, but not this monologue.

Wow, the few user reviews of this are a trip. Half 1-stars declaring it the enemy of decency, half 10-stars declaring it the second coming. Both of which are rather overstated.

This filmed one-woman-plus stage play begins as a nostalgic piece about a childhood spent debating the constitution, but makes a number of interesting turns as it thoughtfully explores America and its foundational document in great depth. It's a smart show for a smart, intellectual audience. The author is decidedly progressive, which is what all the user reviews are really responding to. And while I generally try and gauge how could a political movie is beyond its political points, you really can't separate the two.

In the end, there is a debate on whether to rewrite the constitution, with the author taking one side or another against a teen debater. I think that even though this looks like a genuine debate that it's in large part written by the author, since I watched some of a clip of her debating on the other side and both debaters said pretty similar things to what's in the film. This feels like a bit of a cheat - the play likes to suggest that it's free and loose and could be different every time but I suspect (as someone who hasn't watched the play and doesn't really know) that it's not that different from one night to the next - but it's still a fascinating debate topic argued wittily and well.

If you don't like intellectual discussions or your head is likely to explode if you hear the wealthy slaveowners who founded this country may actually have had imperfections then you probably won't enjoy this, but if you like something smart and funny and clever and original then you should check this out.