Heidi Schreck and Oliver Butler Talk WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME and More on Backstage LIVE With Richard Ridge

BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge is keeping up with all of their latest projects on Backstage Live, bringing you in-depth interviews twice weekly. On October 14, he chatted with Heidi Schreck and Oliver Butler, whose What the Constitution Means to Me premieres Friday on Prime Video!

"I'm ecstatic and also, every time the show kind of moves to a bigger arena, it's scary for me," Schreck said. "One of the things Oliver and I discovered together while rehearsing it, it took us a while to figure out how it operates, and one of the ways it operates is as this sort-of living experience the way that the Constitution is a living document."

"The debate...it changes with the times, we're constantly updating that debate," she said of one of the scenes in the play. "So there's something slightly horrifying about freezing it in time."

But, she goes on to say that she is grateful that more people will get to see the production.

The pair went on to talk about the importance of the arts, and how much the industry needs funding from the government to get through these times.

"The industry has not done a great job of educating people about the value of arts," Butler said. "The average person has no idea the sort of sorry state of salaries for artists...And then of course, if you haven't made the case for how critical you are in the world before a problem hits, then you're going to be left out when it does."

Watch the full interview below:

What the Constitution Means to Me, a filmed version of the critically-acclaimed, award-winning play created by and starring Heidi Schreck, will premiere Oct. 16, 2020, exclusively on Amazon Prime Video, in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide. In the final, record-breaking week of its hit Broadway run, director Marielle Heller (director of Oscar-nominated films A Beautiful Day in THE NEIGHBORHOOD and Can You Ever Forgive Me?) captured the play at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York City.

Fifteen-year-old Heidi Schreck earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. In this hilarious, hopeful, and achingly human show Heidi resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives. What the Constitution Means to Me was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Obie Award and New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play. Schreck also received two Tony Award nominations for What the Constitution Means to Me for Best Play and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, and received the 2019 Benjamin Hadley Danks Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. Directed for the stage by Obie Award winner Oliver Butler, What the Constitution Means to Me also features Mike Iveson, Rosdely Ciprian, and Thursday Williams.