What the Constitution Means to Me Now That Roe Is Dead: Seeing Hopeful Solidarity in the Anzaldúan Nepantla

Abstract

For the last two years, I have been conducting research that positions Heidi Schreck’s predominantly one-woman play, What the Constitution Means to Me (2019, dir. Oliver Butler), which she both wrote and starred in, within a canon of feminist storytelling and scholarship. On June 24, 2022, one day before I shared my findings at the international feminist media studies conference “Console-ing Passions,” the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. With its overturning of Roe v. Wade, I found myself, like Schreck, having to add devastating corrections to an already tragic script. Unlike me, though, Schreck anticipated the ever-changing present, noting in the play’s stage directions that certain data in the script “are based on published statistics from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center in the year 2019. They should be updated in performance to reflect the current reality” (38).