GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY AND GRIFFIN SEYMOUR CENTRE PRESENT THEATRE COMPANY BY SUZIE MILLER REGINALD THEATRE, SEYMOUR CENTRE 23 JUNE – 10 JULY 2021 DIRECTOR WITH LEE LEWIS SHERIDAN HARBRIDGE DESIGNER RENÉE MULDER LIGHTING DESIGNER TRENT SUIDGEEST SOUND DESIGNER & COMPOSER PAUL CHARLIER STAGE MANAGER KHYM SCOTT Griffin would like to acknowledge and thank the generous support of our 2019 Production Patrons and Production Partners. Government partners Presented with Production patron Griffin’s Production Griffin acknowledges the Partner program generosity of the Seaborn, Broughton & Walford Foundation in allowing it the use of the SBW Stables Theatre rent free, less outgoings, since 1986. PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTE Prima Facie - A (Latin) legal term meaning: On the face of it. This production is dedicated to all the women who have bravely approached me following the play’s premiere season and shared their stories with me. Courageous, confdent, inspiring women. The idea behind Prima Facie has evidence in seXual assault cases are just been playing out in my mind since my not believed! Even by other women. law school days, years before I was a To report a seXual crime, attend all of playwright. It was there waiting for me the court attendances, show up for the to fnd the courage to write, and for prosecution, be cross-eXamined and the right social environment to provide publicly written about in the media, a space for it. In light of the #MeToo takes eXtraordinary courage. It is not movement, Prima Facie was able to a short process either, and, ironically, be realised. Years of practicing as a indicates an immense faith that the human rights and criminal defence system will be fair. But does the legal lawyer did nothing to silence my feminist system deserve this faith? Or does it questioning of the legal system, because silence women further? How can society while I frmly believe that ‘innocent until and therefore the law evolve to reform proven guilty’ is the bedrock of human this area of the legal system? rights, I always felt that its application in seXual assault cases served to If one in three women are being seXually undermine rather than to uphold any assaulted, and only one in ten of those real fairness. women report it, with only one in that ten securing a conviction, there is something The legal system is shaped by the deeply wrong with the system. We need male eXperience: its cases decided by to recognise sexual assault in its many generations of male judges, its laws manifestations, and not only in the legislated by generations of white male easily recognisable stranger predator— politicians, and built against a backdrop because sexual assault occurs on where women were categorised once dates, in relationships, between friends, as the property of their husbands, at parties and in uneXpected social brothers, fathers. So seXual assault situations. It is everywhere. law does not ft the lived experience of women. While innocence/guilt focuses We have now seen, in these last months, on whether the (usually) male person a devastating series of sexual assault reasonably believes there was consent allegations in our country’s highest halls or not provided by the (usually) female of power. I shudder when I hear that the person, it has always been the victims, seXual assault survivor is troubled or (usually) women, who are on trial, emotional—because of course they are, cross-eXamined and made to relive their and it’s surely irrelevant to their truth- humiliating experience. Yet signifcantly, telling. This is not to say that we should research has shown that women giving damn anyone on an accusation. In this play, the audience see the really do matter. Having the enormously seXual assault as it happens, then sit talented Lee Lewis directing this work, through the legal twisting of evidence and with its premiere season starring that makes the survivor of the seXual the dynamic Sheridan Harbridge, made assault appear to be a liar. In this story, for a perfect team. Prima Facie is the audiences are not the judge and now back up and running post-COVID, jury, but witnesses to what happened, with the same perfect team and with and then to what happened in the legal further layers of conteXt after years system to betray a woman’s truth. now of #MeToo discussion and the ongoing interrogations and calls for When Prima Facie was frst staged at accountability in the highest offces of Griffn—Australia’s beloved playwrights’ our land. theatre—one performance was dedicated to an entire audience of Most importantly, this play is back on legally-educated women who worked our stages because of everyone who in law, politics or policy. The audience works at Griffn, those who sit on its was made up of women judges, QCs, Board, and its donors. Thanks also SCs, barristers, solicitors and female to the brilliant creative team behind politicians from both state and federal Prima Facie, and the Seymour Centre, parliaments. All of us women. An Queensland Theatre, HotHouse Theatre eXtraordinary energy in that room. and Geelong Arts Centre, and their staff. As one of the creatives, I sat on stage It truly takes a village! afterwards. What followed was a long My beloved mother, Elaine, died just and eXciting discussion playing out at before the opening night of the premiere an authentic intersection between art season of Prima Facie in 2019. She was and social change. Later that week, my biggest fan and most enthusiastic members of the NSW Law Reform audience member. I miss her every Commission also attended a weekday day and know she would be eXtremely matinée. thrilled to be part of the ongoing One night, Her EXcellency, the conversation around it. Honourable Margaret Beazley, the Suzie Miller Governor of NSW, attended with staff, Writer and later I would discuss the ideas behind the play with her. Signifcantly, we also had an infux of boys’ schools attend in groups accompanied by teachers and parents. The compassion and curiosity eXpressed by those young men after the show offered a true beacon of hope for future generations. When this play was awarded the prestigious national award, the Griffn Award, followed by three AWGIES, it proved to me that women’s stories A NOTE FROM THE LEGAL WORLD Prima Facie was frst performed in the The #MeToo movement was powerful wake of the #MeToo movement, and, because when one woman tells her story like that movement, it shows the power she can be pilloried for it, or dismissed, of storytelling in the face of injustice… but when everyone tells their stories, Bringing individual complaints before they have a different quality of power, a the law, on its own, is not enough. Law cultural power. When women collectively reforms, hard won, unravel before our tell their stories, and when those stories eyes as they are unstitched by the enter our cultural forms—social media, legal system. Tessa, strong, clever and television, books and theatre—we are skilled, says that ‘something has to changing the culture in which law is change’, but what? embedded, and the material from which it is made. Prima Facie itself offers part of the answer. We can change the law as much Prima Facie demonstrates how that can as we like, but until the experiential happen. It’s the story of one woman, material it is made from changes, those and the two very different worlds of laws are easily eroded. The shape law she inhabits. It is also the story of that law takes depends on the stories the 99 women out of every 100 who are that are heard and the harms that are sexually assaulted and who are left out seen. As #MeToo and other hashtag of law. The gap between the two worlds movements put violence against women of meaning in Prima Facie needs to be centre stage, some men expressed closed so that women’s experiences surprise that harassment was so become the stuff of which law is made. common an experience, even as it was Since we made the law, as Tessa happening all around them. We have points out, we can choose to make it to stop treating every act of violence differently, making our own stories—our against women anew, as if there is own lives—into law. nothing pervasive or patterned about it. Karen O’Connell We have to tell our stories everywhere, Associate Professor of Law, at once, together. University of Technology Sydney DIRECTOR’S NOTE There is nothing new about this play. Suzie Miller is a scientist who evolved It is so familiar. That is what makes into a lawyer who evolved into a it so distressing. It is fction. But it is playwright. Her stories are created based on a key kernel of reality that I with a breadth of lived experience have personally lived. That you have that gives her not only the courage of lived. That the woman sitting next to her convictions but also the courage you has lived. That your mother, your of her emotions. She writes with a grandmother, your best friend has lived. language that has struggled to fnd a This is the reality of so many everyday place on the traditionally male stage violences, of absolutely ordinary awful that is mainstage theatre. She is one moments, that it is almost journalistic. of an extraordinary number of female It is almost verbatim. It is almost playwrights who have continued to documentary. It does not exaggerate or create despite not being produced embellish. by major companies. This country owes them a cultural debt for their Prima Facie is a new play to add to persistence in representing non- the chorus of voices in Australia today dominant voices in the theatrical protesting that the current legal system landscape.