.” In it, she talks about how when she was 15 years old she began to travel the country to speak about and debate the Constitution for prize money that eventually put her through college. Since the first iteration of the play in 2017 all the way through its acclaimed Broadway run, which earned her writing and performance Tony nominations, Schreck played herself. Not only as a teenager, but as a grown woman, reflecting on her own history and that of her family.
Maria plays Heidi but all the characters in the show at some point address the audience as themselves. I read you worked together to put some of Maria’s own story into the show?I wasn’t quite sure when we started rehearsing how much of Maria’s own story should be folded into the play. So we spent two very long weekends together where I just interviewed Maria and took down her stories from her life that related to the play. I left with many pages of stories and it was like a whole other play.