The Lilith Blog

April 10, 2019 by Aileen Jacobson

A Feminist Takes on the Constitution—Live on Broadway

The easiest word to overlook in the title “What the Constitution Means to Me” is the “me.” The exceptionally moving and surprisingly entertaining play by Heidi Schreck now running at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway is about the Constitution, of course.

But it is also about Schreck—who plays herself, the central character—in resonant personal ways: Consider the story she tells of her own great-great grandmother, brought to America when she was purchased for $75 through a matrimonial publication, later placed in a mental institution and dead at age 36 of what the death certificate called “melancholia.” Domestic violence may have been part of the cause. 

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