What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck

Author:Heidi Schreck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

HEIDI

Thank you, Mike. Everybody, this is Mike Iveson. Mike is a wonderful actor, a wonderful man, and … When I realized that there was going to be so much violence in this play, I really wanted some positive male energy up here with me.

(She turns to him. He looks a bit confused. Then he begins to speak. As he tells his story, he starts to remove his Legionnaire accoutrements: jacket, hat, tie. He is now Mike.)

MIKE

I’m representing a real person from Heidi’s life, Mel Yonkin, who was a Legionnaire. Fought in World War II. He was an incredibly sweet man who would travel around the country with Heidi and her family from contest to contest. He always told her how proud he was of her, and when she won he would get kinda … misty. Pretend he had a cold.

I was very excited that Heidi asked me to be in the show, though I did think it was like a serious responsibility to be representing “positive male energy.” I feel like I spent so many years refusing to be boxed in gender-wise, and I guess I thought of myself as having “gender-neutral” energy? Which, given that I always present myself as male, just seems sorta irresponsibly privileged to me sometimes.

Also, I would like to be able to report that I too had a crush on Patrick Swayze when I was younger like Heidi did, but the truth is I was kind of more into Mel Gibson. Yeah. I remember really wanting to be him in that movie The Road Warrior. After the movie came out I was always talking to my friends about: (Bad Australian accent) “Oh I’m gonna dye this little tuft of my hair blond over my ear,” like Mel had in the movie. I thought I had a hilarious Australian accent, but you just heard it, it’s a Cockney accent.

Which is interesting because my dad is a British working-class immigrant, but he’s not a Cockney, he’s from Wales and Yorkshire, which are two totally different accents, and I’m not going to do them and you are welcome. My dad is an incredibly charming guy, all my friends are really crazy about him and I remember when I was a kid both admiring his, like, masculine charisma, and also knowing that something about it was like a little put on?

For example, he went through a CB-radio phase. I was in high school, we were driving across country together, but we were in two separate cars, and he wanted us to stay in touch via CB radios. My dad would say stuff like, “Heads up, Mike, we’re gonna take a left at the next exit,” and I would say stuff like, “Hey, Dad, when are we going to get a bathroom break?” And one time another guy’s voice busted in: “Coupla queers on the line.” Some trucker or somebody—definitely a deep male voice, probably deeper than mine or my dad’s. There was a terrible pause and a kind of pit in my stomach.

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