Fifteen-year-old Heidi Schreck put herself through college by giving speeches about the U.S. Constitution. Now, the Obie Award winner resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the document's profound impact on women's bodies—starting with her great-great-grandmother, a mail-order bride who died under mysterious circumstances. This witty and searingly personal exploration breathes new life into our founding document and imagines how it will shape the next generation of American women. Obie Award winner Oliver Butler directs.
Finalist: What the Constitution Means to Me, by Heidi Schreck
A charming and incisive analysis of gender and racial biases inherent to the U.S. Constitution that examines how this living document could evolve to fit modern America.
Nominated Work
What the Constitution Means to Me
Biography
Heidi Schreck is a playwright, performer and screenwriter living in Brooklyn. Her most recent plays include What the Constitution Means to Me, currently playing at New York Theatre Workshop, and Grand Concourse, which debuted at Playwrights Horizons and Steppenwolf Theatres in 2014-15 and has played at theaters all over the country. Grand Concourse won a Lilly Award for best new play in 2015 and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her other plays have been produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Page73, Seattle Public Theatre, New Georges, Rattlestick Theatre, and more. Heidi holds commissions from the Atlantic Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, and South Coast Repertory Theatre and she is working on a new translation of Three Sisters for NYTW. Heidi’s screenwriting credits include “I Love Dick,” “Billions” and “Nurse Jackie,” and she is currently developing projects with Annapurna Pictures and Imagine Television. Heidi has also taught playwriting and screenwriting at NYU, Columbia, Kenyon College, and Primary Stages, and long ago she worked as a journalist in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She is the recipient of two Obie Awards, a Drama Desk, and the Theatre World Award.
Winners
Prize Winner in Drama in 2019:
Jackie Sibblies Drury
A hard-hitting drama that examines race in a highly conceptual, layered structure, ultimately bringing audiences into the actors’ community to face deep-seated prejudices.
Drama
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2019:
Clare Barron
A refreshingly unorthodox play that conveys the joy and abandon of dancing, while addressing the changes to body and mind of its preteen characters as they peer over the precipice toward adulthood.
The Jury
The Jury
Misha Berson(Chair)
theater critic, teacher, author and lecturer, Seattle, Wa.
Gina Gionfriddo
playwright, New York, N.Y.
Henry D. Godinez
Professor of Theatre, Northwestern University; resident artistic associate, Goodman Theatre
Wendy C. Goldberg
Artistic Director, National Playwrights Conference, Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center
Peter Marks
chief theater critic
Winners in Drama
Martyna Majok
An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.
Lynn Nottage
For a nuanced yet powerful drama that reminds audiences of the stacked deck still facing workers searching for the American dream.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
A landmark American musical about the gifted and self-destructive founding father whose story becomes both contemporary and irresistible.
Stephen Adly Guirgis
A nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death.
2019 Prize Winners
South Florida Sun Sentinel
For exposing failings by school and law enforcement officials before and after the deadly shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner of The New York Times
For an exhaustive 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump’s finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges. (Moved by the Board from the Investigative Reporting category, where it was also entered.)
Matt Hamilton, Harriet Ryan and Paul Pringle of the Los Angeles Times
For consequential reporting on a University of Southern California gynecologist accused of violating hundreds of young women for more than a quarter-century.
Carlos Lozada of The Washington Post
For trenchant and searching reviews and essays that joined warm emotion and careful analysis in examining a broad range of books addressing government and the American experience.