Prima Facie writer Suzie Miller on the phenomenal real-world outcomes of her art
StoriesAug 26, 2024
Suzie Miller. Photo by Sarah Hadley.
With Prima Facie and RGB: Of Many, One receiving international and national acclaim, Suzie Miller is firmly on the map. As the National Theatre Live recording of Prima Facie (starring Jodie Comer) releases worldwide this September, and returns for its encore cinema release in Australia, we caught up with the playwright and lawyer.
Here, she tells us about the impactful real-world outcomes of Prima Facie (in which a young barrister argues her own sexual assault case and confronts the inherent patriarchy of the legal system), and the fascinating projects she’s working on next.
“The outcomes of all my plays have affected me quite profoundly, but some of the outcomes from Prima Facie have blown my mind.
It’s no longer about me or my play, it’s about the people that come to see it and how they then go out into the world and make change. You realise the power of storytelling.
“When the play first came out in Australia in 2019, we had a night where the audience was just women trained in law. We had women judges, women senior counsel, we had barristers, solicitors, we had politicians, we had Tanya Plibersek, we had the best women judges in the country in the room.
“We had a Q&A with myself and [director] Lee Lewis and Sheridan [Harbridge, actor]. It went for up to three hours because these women wanted to talk about this. They were saying, ‘these things happen in our workplace and we’ve got so much to lose if we speak out, we’ll never get briefed again, or we’ll never be employed by men again because they’ll be scared we’ll accuse them’.
“That was a shock to me. These are the most powerful women in our society, and they were showing how frightening it was for them to speak out. I thought, ‘what chance do other people have?’ But it did start this wave of conversation. The New South Wales Law Reform Commission came to see the play, and the Governor General and all these people with power came.
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“When the show went to London, we had judges, barristers, we had law reform, we had government – so many people came to the show. I was quite nervous. I thought, ‘I’m going to get a lot of debate and pushback about some of the ideas’. But in fact, it was overwhelmingly well-received, not just with the critics, but more importantly with the people that can make a change.
“What’s interesting when you’re a writer is you can look at a paradigm from a distance and say, ‘I can see where the problems are’. But when you are in it and you’re working in it, people are just so busy that they forget that the system has lots of problems and that they need to actually act within the system to change it.
“I had a judge call me about three days after Prima Facie opened to say, ‘I’m the judge that writes the direction to the jury on sexual assault, I saw the play yesterday and I’ve been up all night thinking about it, and I’ve redrafted the direction that judges have to read to the jury all over the UK. I’ve used some of the language from the play and I wanted to ask your permission’.
“That was overwhelming – I thought, isn’t that amazing that you can put on a story that’s totally a piece of fiction and one of the highest judges in the land, who has the power to change the directions to the jury, can come and see it?
“Some judges came up to me in Liverpool and said, ‘oh, we give that direction all the time, we call it the Prima Facie direction’. And a Northern Irish judge at the Old Bailey made it compulsory for judges in Northern Ireland to watch the National Theatre Live version of the play before they sit on rape trials.
“I had emails from police officers that have worked for 30 years saying, ‘we now realise we’ve been doing it wrong and we are really committed to change to make sure that someone who makes a report feels comfortable, feels believed, and feels like there’s a chance that they can take it further’. It was just this amazing wave of action – the perfect example of art infiltrating the system.
“The great thing about the NT Live filming is that it’s being used as a judicial tool. I’ve even used it talking to judges in Australia; we played a clip when I spoke at the National Judges Conference in Sydney. I talked about the play and what it was trying to do to an audience of judges where I could say, ‘this is what you can do with rape myths in your court’.
“I was also invited to the UN in New York where they watched three clips from the NT Live filming. I spoke to the UN about sexual assault, and they talked about how it’s happening within their organisation out in the field.
“As a lawyer, that’s the sort of [chance for change] you dream of, and you take that opportunity and run with it.
“But one of the most heartfelt things for me is the thousands of women who have written to me and the actors and directors, talking about their experience and how the play affected them. How, consequent to seeing it, they’ve gone home and talked to their families, or they now realise it’s not their fault, it’s not their shame. It’s the shame of the perpetrator. I guess you can’t want for more than that, that you can affect people’s lives so profoundly.
“One of the lines in the play is ‘once you see, you can’t not see’. You see forever where the systemic imbalance and inequities are. I’m now even more buoyed and motivated to write works that create that empathy.
“I have a new play at the National Theatre in London next year, announcing in September (2024), so you’ll have to believe me when I say it’s got an amazing actor. It’s the same director and artistic team, so we’re all really excited to be working together again.
“I’m working with the amazing Los Angeles writer David E. Kelley [Boston Legal, Ally McBeal] – we’ve created a really interesting program for [production company] A24. I’m also working with Lena Dunham, who did Girls, to create a work together.
“And I’m working on a brand-new play for Australia that’s a ‘state of the nation’, based around the inaugural season of AFL for women. It talks about how Australia used to be a country that said, ‘yeah, let’s give it a go’. And now we seem to be a country that says no. We say no to refugees. We say no to Indigenous recognition in our constitution. We seem to have a lot more fear.
“What I loved about Australia, after being around the world, was that I always thought we were a nation that said, ‘yeah, let’s give it a go if it doesn’t exist’. I want Australia to come back to being that character again for me – to see that disappear is just heart-breaking. Australia is a magic place when it can swallow its fear and say, ‘yes, maybe this won’t take away from other things’. And I want Australia to get back to that.
“When I talk to young playwrights, I say, just be truthful to the word and to the story and make a play that really speaks to people, and then some of those people who see your play might have the power to effect great change.
“It’s about you showing a story that people can receive and then go back to their worlds, or their workplace, or their dinner table, and actually make the change that you dream of happening.
“There’s something about a piece of art that can say something to people in a way that a lecture can’t. It’s not didactic. It goes straight for the guts.”
