What the Constitution Means to Me
Heidi Schreck
Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory
At the age of fifteen, Heidi Schreck remembers “in addition to being terrifyingly turned on all the time” and obsessed with Salem witch trials, theatre, and “most importantly” Patrick Swayze,” “I was a zealot” of the Constitution. As then a high school sophomore in Wenatchee, Washington, young Heidi traveled around the U.S. to the hallowed halls of American Legion halls in order to compete in oratory contests where she entered debates on the American Constitution – winning enough money to put herself through college.
That fascination with the Constitution and the love of a good argument under pressure evidently never went away as she became a playwright, actor, and screenwriter. So much is that the case that Heidi Schreck premiered What the Constitution Means to Me in 2017 at Clubbed Thumb’s off-Broadway festival, Summerworks. She went on to star on Broadway and at the Kennedy Center her authored, autobiographical play about those high-school-year, Constitutional debates, throwing in a parallel history of the last three generations of the women in her family and how her and their lives reflect the importance of certain of the Constitution’s Amendments.
At a time when our nation and the Supreme Court itself is increasingly at odds at what the Constitution does and does not mean in 2026, Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory is staging a high energy, fascinatingly compelling, and often thought-provoking What the Constitution Means to Me. Convincingly, much-acclaimed actor and voiceover artist, Kimberly Donovan, takes on the first-person role of Heidi Schreck with no hint to us as audience until near the closing moments that all that she has revealed actually did not happen in her life, but instead in the life of the evening’s absent — but very present — playwright.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 3.5 E
What the Constitution Means to Me continues through February 8, 2026, in a ninety-minute (no intermission) production by Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory, , 1285 East Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City, CA. Tickets are available online at www.hillbarntheatre.org or by contacting directly the box office by emailing boxoffice@hillbarn.org or by calling 650-349-6411.
Photo Credit: Tracy Martin
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