All Rights Reserved. In fact, a genuine debate with a Federalist Society type would have been far more interesting and substantive than the gimmicky and scripted pseudo-debate that concludes What the Constitution Means to Me, where the question being stagily debated is whether we should keep or abolish the Constitution an entirely absurd premise. JG: If youre not a lawyer, if youre not involved in Supreme Court litigation, there are groups out there who are trying to amend the Constitution in various ways. What the Constitution Means to Me - WAM Theatre Each night, Lacke debates with one of two young people. LEARN MORE . Some of that has been statutory. And its one of the things the court criticized in the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe last spring: that if there is a constitutional right to privacy, it does not include the right to decide to end a pregnancy. 2023 TimeLine Theatre. Heidi (Beth Lacke, right) is both enamored with and deeply troubled by the Constitution, in reflections witnessed by the Legionnaire (Raymond Fox). The state of our rights - Chicago Reader By remaining on this website, you indicate your consent. Theatre In Chicago features the most comprehensive listings, news, reviews, and pre-theatre dining suggestions for the shows that are currently playing in the Chicago area as well as future productions of shows. Fast forward to TimeLine Theatre on Wednesday night for the first local production of the work. To purchase tickets, visit wamtheatre.com or BerkshireTheatreGroup.org or contact the Colonial Theatre Ticket Office by calling 413-997-4444. Itching to learn more from our Constitutional experts featured in the Backstory? Reviews What the Constitution Means to Me Allison Shoemaker October 16, 2020 Tweet The word "timely" has gotten a hell of a workout over the last several years. ", "What the Constitution Means To Me was part memoir, part debate, part history lesson and broke the fourth wall so as to fully engage the audience. You get into some thorny institutional questions very quickly. Could you share a definition of those, and also talk about the fragility of those rights and what our perception of personal human rights should be in the context of State or Federal laws? At the performance I saw, the show had some cool new ideas but hadnt fully self-animated; the productions hesitancies are especially notable toward the end of the main part, which does not rise in stakes, vulnerability and tension as it could and should, so that the conclusion feels both tragic and hopeful. It just becomes a disagreement about which those are. Original Helen Hayes Theater 240 W. 44th St., New York, NY SYNOPSIS: Fifteen-year-old Heidi put herself through college by winning Constitutional debates across the country. Or they look at the Bill of Rights from 1791 and say, I know my rights are listed in the Bill of Rights, lets look at those. Overall, though, we need to think about the Supreme Court as being very much of this world and very much about power in politics. That privacy within marraige was part of the penumbra of rights that were not specifically referenced in the Constitution, yet often affirmed by the court. There are so many places to push outside the court. You have to take this review as the work of someone seeing this piece for the fourth time. But that language isnt in there either. Whether or not the Constitution should be abolished. People often invoke rights and believe that the original Constitution, from 1789, is the foundation of those rights. Directed by Karen Azenberg. Froehlich, John H. (December 31, 1935) State Museum of Pennsylvania, Second Continental Congress: Address to the Colonies, Pennsylvania Constitution and Bill of Rights adopted, North Carolina Constitution and Bill of Rights adopted, Massachusetts Constitution and Bill of Rights adopted, New Hampshire Constitution and Bill of Rights adopted, Annapolis Convention: Call for a Grand Convention, Congress approves Constitutional Convention, Rhode Island again declines to send delegates, Constitutional Convention lacks necessary quorum, Constitutional Convention meets quorum requirement, Constitutional Convention reconvenes: Committee of Detail Report, Committee of Style Report: final draft of Constitution, Confederation Congress reads Constitution, Confederation Congress debates Constitution, Call for state ratifying conventions by Confederation Congress, Rhode Island Rejects Call for a State Ratifying Convention, North Carolina calls for state convention, South Carolina calls for state convention, New York calls for state convention (Assembly)(Senate), Massachusetts ratifies 187-168 with 9 proposed amendments(, New Hampshire ratifying convention votes 56-51 for adjournment until June 18, Rhode Island rejects call for a state ratifying convention, South Carolina ratifying convention meets, New Hampshire ratifying convention: second session, New Hampshire ratifies 57-47 with 12 proposed amendments(Tansill), Virginia ratifies 89-79 with 20 proposed amendments, Congress accepts ratification of Constitution, North Carolina ratifying convention meets, New York rejects conditional ratification, New York ratifies 30-27 with 31 proposed amendments, North Carolina votes 184-84 against ratification, North Carolina calls for a second state convention, Election of Senators, Representatives, and President, First Inaugural Address of George Washington, Report of House Select Committee on Madisons Proposals, North Carolina elects 271 delegates to second state convention, House passes 17 Amendments to the Constitution, Senate passes 12 Amendments to the Constitution, Congress sends 12 Amendments to the state legislatures for ratification, Last business under Articles of Confederation, North Carolina ratifiying convention: second session, North Carolina ratifies the Constitution 194-77, Maryland cedes ten square miles for a federal city, Rhode Island calls for state convention to ratify Constitution, Rhode Island elects delegates to ratifying convention, Rhode Island ratifying convention: first session, Rhode Island ratifying convention: second session, Rhode Island ratifies the Constitution 34-32, Bill of Rights added to the Constitution in the form of Ten Amendments. To add on to what Joanna said, the court is another political branch among the three branches of our government. Review: Timeline Theatre Stages What the Constitution Means to Me With Review: What the Constitution Means to Me (3 stars). It was dirty. The Legionnaire (Raymond Fox, left) is clear with Heidi (Beth Lacke) that she must strictly follow the rules of the competition. The State of Illinois cannot interfere with your freedom of speech, but Facebook can, TimeLine Theatre can. The topic? Courts are in some ways fairly weak entities. Much of the constitutional rights are framed in the negative, but courts are also very loath to go beyond that, to demand certain kinds of changes that they dont necessarily have the power to implement. You can find those groups. H eidi Schreck tells us she first performed this show a decade ago to about 20 people, mostly friends, and has since rolled it out during presidential elections, supreme court hearings, marches and. How did you come to have the Constitution as an area of specialization? Performances Nov 27-Dec 30 at the Greenwich House Theater (27 Barrow Street) Welcome to the What the Constitution Means to Me Online Lobby experience! Timeline on this site. The period from the 1950s through the 1970s, when the Supreme Court was a little bit more at the forefront of pushing for things like racial integration, pushing for womens rights, pushing against laws that infringed on reproductive autonomy, that infringed on womens rights, etc., is really an outlier in terms of how the Supreme Court has operated for most of American history. I think its nice to see the interest coming and going in in many directions, because thats there in the play, too. WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME: Company Member - TimeLine Theatre *The designation of "Jeff Recommended" is given to a production when at least ONE ELEMENT of the show was deemed outstanding by the Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee. What the Constitution Means to Me - Broadway World Maren Robinson: We are so excited to have you at TimeLine. To the extent that we believe we have certain rights that no government entity should be able to violate, that is not a late-18th-century idea. YOUR SUPPORT MAKES A DIFFERENCE! I will say, one of the most fun things I get to do is to teach constitutional law to undergraduates, since it looms so large in popular discourse, and students dont necessarily have a full understanding of what constitutional rights there are. Beth Lacke stars as Heidi in WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME. The result was not ideal but workable, it turned out. But there are many other ways of working on that issue. What the Constitution Means to Me - TimeLine Theatre So every generation, every new decision, is an opportunity for courts to give meaning to legal language, and for people to press before the Supreme Court different ideas of what this language can mean. Set in 1989, the action unfolds on Jessica Kuehnau Wardell's frozen-in-time set. People dont talk to each other, she continues. From the beginning of the Revolution to the adoption of the Bill of Rights, trace the timeline of the American Constitution. Learn more about the cast and production team behind the show. 2023 TimeLine Theatre. The idea of a constitutional right to privacy is not that different from many other constitutional interpretations the court offered prior to 1965, regarding a lot of different issues. I think it gets a little too easy to think of the Supreme Court as having some sort of additional insight into what the Constitution meansas opposed to being this group of nine people whose decisions about what it means bind us politically and legally. We need to be thinking about what is possible, what could happen in the future, what we might do with the Constitution in the future, how to approach overturning past decisions that we dont like, how to protect decisions that you do like, etc. Web site designed and maintained by I was lucky enough to find an English professor who had a similar interest and was willing to talk to me about those issues, and I later became a historian who focuses on Reconstruction, a period when the Constitution was dramatically amended. Raymond Fox and Beth Lacke in What the Constitution Means to Me at TimeLine Theatre. A timeline of events of and relating to the U.S. Constitution, U.S. history, and world history . I also love what youve both said about the disconnect between what people think their rights are, and what they actually are. So, in a variety of classes I teach, getting to talk about what the Constitution says, what the Supreme Court has done with the Constitution, and how things change, is one of the most fun kinds of teaching I get to do. Mount Vernon is owned and maintained by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, a private, non-profit organization. Its been really fun to see how the play reads on paper, and Im looking forward to seeing it in person. Image: 2019 Broadway Production (Joan Marcus) Request license Get the Script Among those he mentions is freedom of association, which is a very important right that the Supreme Court has found to exist in the First Amendment, even though its not mentioned in the First Amendment, because the ability to associate with one another is so crucial to the other rights described in the First Amendment like speech, that it is within the penumbra of things that are protected.