This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Juneau high school students Alivia Gomez and Maddie Bass are playing student debaters in Perseverance Theatre’s new play, “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
The play reflects playwright Heidi Schreck’s experience as a teenager participating in constitutional debates in 1989, and how it influenced her understanding of the founding document of our government as an adult.
During the play’s run in Juneau, Gomez and Bass step into Schreck’s shoes and draw on their own experience in high school debate.
Listen:
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Alivia Gomez: I’m Alivia Gomez. I’m a senior at Juneau Douglas High School. I play debater in the performance, “What the Constitution Means to Me.” Aside from that, I’m also the debate captain of Juneau Douglas’s drama, debate and forensics team. I’m very proud to be.
Maddie Bass: Hi, my name is Maddie Bass. I’m a sophomore at Juneau Douglas High School. I’m Alivia’s understudy for the role of debater, in “What the Constitution Means to Me.” I’ve also been debating for one year.
Alivia Gomez: I will say for I think debate, particularly, because a lot of the topics are politically focused, it really gives you a more open minded perspective going into things. Like, you’re kind of forced to hear these resolutions and you have your preliminary ideas about it.
Like, for example, the topic for nationals last year was, “On balance, the benefits of executive orders outweigh their harms.”
And of course, everyone kind of has their bias on it, but you’re kind of forced to consider both aspects of it and really consider, ‘Okay, I have to weigh these, these really hard factors.’
And I think that’s really helpful, not especially for younger minds, because I really believe that we need more young people politically involved.
Maddie Bass: Our world has drastically changed since Heidi Schreck was a teenager. And so it’s a really interesting way for the audience to see how, even though you know, Heidi was talking about the Constitution — what was it? 30 years ago — and it’s still just as relevant to us today.
I’ve learned the most about the laws of this country and how my own life has been shaped by the Constitution, from these past couple weeks working on this play.
You know, it’s the baseline for all the protections and all the harms for people in this country, which is something so fascinating and so scary at the same time. Yeah, yeah.
Alivia Gomez: Obviously, this script was written a while ago. But I really, truly think that what makes this play so special is that its importance is timeless. It will always be relevant in how we can better shape our democracy, the question of how we can get better as a country, which is really what the place centers around, and how we can fight for better, positive human rights for all of us, is really the theme that it shows.
Maddie Bass: There are two different versions of the debate. So if you, if you go and watch this play, you’re going to see a coin flip. That coin flip is real. We don’t know which side we’re taking when we go into this performance. So there is that, that little bit of improvisation in there too.
Alivia Gomez: There’s also, yeah, a little room for mystery as to be arguing, which is going to be really cool, because we’re also going to be keeping tally of which way the audience votes, because the audience will be our judges.
