[Coast Culture] A Stage for “We the People”: What the Constitution Means to Me at the Newport Performing Arts Center

By Don Gomez

In a day and age colored by divisiveness, with Americans hardly able to agree on

economic policy, social issues, and the practices which define good government, the

stage at the Newport Performing Arts Center has become a rare kind of public square.

Here, in this small coastal town, far from the nation’s power centers, theatergoers are

gathering not for a debate, but for a play—What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi

Schreck’s acclaimed reflection on our nation’s founding document, which shaped her

youth and haunted her adulthood. Part memoir and part civic meditation, the play blends the personal and the political in a way that feels uniquely suited to this moment—and, as it turns out, uniquely suited to community theater.

For director Marc Maislen, that connection is no accident. His company, New Visions

Arts, has spent decades building productions through volunteer effort—a collaboration

of actors, technicians, costumers, and stagehands drawn from all walks of life in the

local community. The process is inherently democratic: everyone contributes, everyone

matters. “Theater,” Maislen says, “is by definition a community event, a collaborative

event.”

Maislen views What the Constitution Means to Me as a conversation—and a reminder

that democracy, like theater, only survives when people show up. Indeed, New Visions

Arts runs almost entirely on volunteer effort. Performers, set builders, lighting designers,

ushers, and ticket-takers come from every corner of the community—retirees, students,

marine scientists, teachers, and others who find in the performing arts a space of

connection that transcends petty considerations such as politics.

This spirit of collaboration is not new to the Newport Performing Arts Center. Perched

near the edge of the Pacific, the venue has long served as a gathering place for the

town—part civic hall, part creative incubator. A place where people meet not just to be

entertained, but to participate in conversations about the arts, and about the type of

world they want to live in. That overarching concept of interconnectedness resonates throughout Schreck’s play, which reimagines the Constitution not as a static text but as a living compact that only endures through collective engagement.

The performance invites the audience to become part of that engagement, collapsing the boundary between the stage and the civic sphere. Schreck’s play, like the work of New Visions itself, reminds us that democracy is not a spectator sport It’s a fitting message for a nation stagnating due to polarization and a fundamental breakdown in communication. On the news and on social media, political arguments often sound like a performance without empathy—a battle of monologues. The Constitution itself has become a weapon in partisan conflict, invoked less as a shared ideal than as a tool to score points. In that type of environment, the very act of listening with an empathetic ear becomes radical.

But in a small theater, participation feels different. It’s slower, more open, built on trust and vulnerability. The act of putting on a play, like the act of sustaining a democracy, depends on showing up, listening, and finding common rhythm despite our differences. Community theater is messy and imperfect—there are missed cues and cracked notes—but those imperfections are what make it real. Schreck’s script asks whether the Constitution still protects all Americans equally—especially women—and whether its promises are strong enough to hold in an age of cynicism. She revisits her teenage years competing in American Legion debate contests on the Constitution, recalling how those debates once felt thrilling and empowering, and how adulthood revealed the deeper contradictions of the document she’d once championed.

By staging that question in a local theater, Maislen’s production reframes it: maybe

democracy doesn’t live or die in courtrooms or on cable news panels, but in spaces like

this one, where neighbors gather to share stories and imagine new possibilities. Here,

the Constitution becomes less an artifact of law and more a living story—one rewritten

with every conversation, every act of empathy, every citizen who chooses to participate

rather than withdraw. The resonance is hard to miss. Newport’s theatergoers, like so many Americans, are emerging from years of cultural whiplash—a pandemic that isolated communities, a digital ecosystem that rewards outrage, and a political climate that feeds on division. For some, gathering again in a shared physical space feels almost transgressive, an

assertion that human connection still matters more than ideological purity.

Community theater, after all, is the most grassroots form of civic participation—and one

of the oldest. It’s volunteer-driven, inclusive, and fiercely local. It insists that art belongs

to everyone, not just the privileged or professional. And when an audience laughs, cries,

and debates together in the darkness of a theater, it becomes a small rehearsal for

something larger: the difficult but necessary art of belonging with one another.

Maislen’s company has built that ethos over decades of performance. Their

productions, from serious dramas to lighthearted comedies, have become touchstones

for the town’s artistic identity—proof that the arts can thrive outside big cities. To step

into the Performing Arts Center is to see the Constitution in miniature: a living

framework built on participation, compromise, and care.

As the lights rise on Schreck’s words and the faces of her characters, the message

lands with quiet clarity: the Constitution, like a play, is only as alive as the people willing

to take part in it. The same can be said of our community. In an era when shouting often

drowns out listening, and cynicism threatens to eclipse hope, Newport’s small stage

offers an alternative vision—one built not on argument, but on collaboration.

Maybe, as Maislen and his company remind us, the way forward isn’t through louder

debate, but through the steady, persistent act of making something together.

Who: New Visions Arts

What: What the Constitution Means to Me

When: Oct 10-26, 2025

Where: Newport Performing Arts Center, Newport, Oregon

Tickets www.coastarts.org