BEST PLAY OF THE YEAR -- New York Times, New Yorker, TIME, Hollywood Reporter, Newsweek, BuzzFeed, Forbes, New York Magazine, NPR, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune
Finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
When she was fifteen years old, Heidi Schreck started traveling the country, taking part in constitutional debates to earn money for her college tuition.
Decades later, in What the Constitution Means to Me, she traces the effect that the Constitution has had on four generations of women in her family, deftly examining how the United States' founding principles are inextricably linked with our personal lives.
Grand Concourse is a play by playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actor Heidi Schreck. It tells the story of Shelley. Having dedicated her life to religious service, Shelley runs a Bronx soup kitchen with unsentimental efficiency. When Emma--a rainbow-haired college dropout--arrives to volunteer, her volatile mix of generosity and self-involvement throws Shelley's life into chaos. She brings a needed jolt to the place, helping a long-time client toward a new job, but her energy also proves unsettling. Even as Emma's behavior grows steadily more erratic, Shelley still wants to believe in her, despite the mounting evidence that she shouldn't.
Shelley must finally ask herself how well she really knows the people she sees every day, how much she can trust them, and what she can and cannot forgive. With both humor and generosity Grand Concourse asks big questions about the limits of both compassion and forgiveness.