Prima Facie

Recipient of the 2018 Griffin Award, this play is a work of fiction that reads like a news story from any given week. It takes aim at how the Australian legal system fails women who bring rape, sexual assault and harassment complaints, offering them few dependable routes to justice.

Tessa is a top criminal barrister who believes the law has no place for feeling and that winning depends on trusting its rules. She relishes victory, including when she defends men charged with sexual assault, and she sets aside her feminist convictions to do the job. Then her position shifts, and she is forced to face the same doubts she has used against other women.

Written by Suzie Miller, whose other works include Sunset Strip and Caress/Ache, this one-woman show uses the courtrooms of Sydney as its stage. Its fast, tight, gripping style exposes a patriarchal justice system in which a complainant's word is pitted against the accused's, and it asks whether a different system is needed.