Suzie Miller on theatre as a force for social change

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Let's give young boys something to work with rather than expecting them to raise themselves on the internet, really.

Why are we putting the responsibility always on the girls and on the young women? Why are we

expecting them to sort of tailor the response that men have to who they are?

I'm absolutely delighted to bring you on the podcast Susie Miller.

If you've heard her name and you're very likely to have, it's because of her ground-breaking

play, Primophacy. A one-woman play that premiered in Sydney and became a West End and Broadway

sensation. Winning major awards and sparking global conversations about sexual assault,

consent and the legal system. With more than 40 plays and 100 productions worldwide, Susie's

impact on the arts world is undeniable. What you will learn in this conversation is that that

impact has been possible because of the multi-layered life that she has led. This is a deep conversation,

it's a long conversation. Because of the way that Susie does her play writing work,

it is a conversation that necessarily canvases issues about rape, sexual assault and consent.

So be aware of that as you turn and listen to this conversation. You will see that right at the end,

Susie, I think, gives us one of the best descriptions I've ever heard about what is happening

with young men and boys and our attitudes to masculinity. As many of you know,

the Global Institute for Women's Leadership, we, through data, particularly public opinion

polling, have been showing for years now that there is a retrenchment in attitudes towards

gender equality and it is most particularly happening amongst young men. Susie and talking about

into Alia, I think helps us understand what's the pathway forward. That part of the conversation,

I think, is not only incredibly powerful and eye-opening, but it almost gives us some new language

for talking about this issue, which is one definitely at the forefront of feminist discourse today.

Please enjoy this conversation.

Susie, welcome to a podcast of One's Own. So privileged to be here, very excited.

Well, I'm delighted to have you and we are recording this podcast in London,

Face to Face, and London was where I had the absolute privilege of seeing Jodie Comer in your play,

Prima Facey, and I am lucky enough to have been to a lot of theatre in my life, but of all the

productions I've ever seen, that one certainly stays with me, and you see a lot of standing

ovation in theatre these days, but that was a moment when an audience united, jumped to its feet,

and you could feel the emotion crackling in the room. So I'm definitely going to be talking to

you about Prima Facey and your contemporary works, but I like in this podcast to go back to where

it all began. You and I are around about the same age. I'm a couple of years older, but I'm going

to climb. We're around at the same age. The best years, right? The best years. All the best people

were born in the early 1960s. We know that for sure. When I was growing up in Adelaide, you were

growing up in St. Kilder, in a working class family. Can you just tell me a little bit about your

early life? Sure. So my early life, we basically lived in a house in Ripon Lee, where my cousins

lived off the street, who I'm still really close to. So my mum's sister had four daughters all

around my age, and so they were kind of like my sisters, really. And then I had a younger brother

and a younger sister, and then we moved somewhere else in St. Kilder, where I think I was about,

oh, probably eight, when we moved, but soon, like about 10 or 11, I had a paper round, which was

my first job. And I remember applying for that paper round, and they asked for a paper boy,

and I went in and made the argument that, you know, as a girl, I could also do it. And I was on

trial, but I was the best paper person they ever had. Everyone sent beautiful Christmas cards,

and sort of, because I layered the paper really carefully in everyone's doorstep, which I don't

think any of the boys did. I didn't realise it was another way, but I did that paper round for a

couple of years, and then I ended up, I mean, I worked all my life, basically, because of my background.

But also, I went to a Catholic Convent School in St. Kilder, which, you know, I really

do credit with my social justice kind of thread. And also, I was at school with lots of young

girls who were from local public housing, and it was very much a vocational school, not a big

academic school. But there were a few academic people there amongst myself included, and that really,

I think that what that school did for me was make me feel like quite a big fish. But also,

it allowed me to really understand that, you know, even though I wasn't an overly privileged kid,

that I was so privileged compared to the other kids I was at school with, and that's actually a

real luxury to see your privilege that early, even when it's not compared to the people I then

subsequently went to university with. And it sounds even as a young girl that you were very

alive to gender stereotypes. I mean, paperboy, but you knew you could do it, papergirl, papergirl.

But where does that come from? Where does that come from? I mean, it was almost in Nate,

because it wasn't like my mother was necessarily like a feminist in that regard. It was just almost

like this strict feeling of fairness. It just didn't feel fair that I wouldn't be able to do

something that I was purely, as capable, if not more capable of doing, than the boys that I was

at primary school with. So, I don't know, that thread, you know, it really did run through me,

and I think it really was, perhaps the nuns that taught me who were very strong individuals,

actually. So, in spite of the fact that some of them had some fairly conservative ideas,

they were certainly strong women, and I was brought up by them in many regards.

And your life changed significantly, didn't it, when your family moved from St. Kilda,

you know, very urban, in fact, very swanky now, but not in the time we're talking about,

St. Kilda, and your family moved up north to Nullenboy, to an indigenous community, because

your father was a mining engineer. Yeah, I mean, that must have been the biggest sort of cultural

shop. It was so shocking, I can't tell you, because you know, I was from Melbourne, I was used to

cold weather, I was nine, my brother was seven, and my sister was two. And I remember when we moved

up to the first day, we got there, we were in a mobile home in a very poor part of Nullenboy,

that all the workers had cottages in. And I remember my brother and I walked around the block,

which was mostly, when I say block, it was mostly bushlands. And I remember I passed out,

I was so hot, and then within a week I was so summer that I was just covered in blisters.

So, and then I went to school, and of course it was a very rough state school that went from

year K all the way through to year 12. And so it was this massive group of, you know, people,

I'd never been to a school like that before I came from a very sort of quite pretty little Catholic

local school. And my mother insisted in all her sort of budgetary concern that because my school

uniform was the same color as the one that I wore in Melbourne, that I should wear my Melbourne

school uniform, which was sort of little gingham and collars and belts to this really rough state

school, which actually had a striped uniform with a mini skirt and no sleeves. So I got bullied

within an inch of my life, Julia. Honestly, I had apple course thrown at me, protracted stuck in my

butt. I mean, you wouldn't believe how much stuff that happened to me. I was like in shock,

total culture shock, but actually at the time, which shows you how racially delineated Australia was,

that was the local high school in Nullandboy City. And as a consequence, the Aboriginal kids would

go to the mission school, as it was called at the time, which is now where your color is, which

is a very, a very strong indigenous community centre and area. And some very smart girls,

or the from your color, were allowed to bus in and go to school at the area school, which was

basically a white school. And those girls didn't really mix with the other students, probably,

because they didn't want to, because everyone was so horrible. But when I was bullied so badly,

they allowed me to play with them. Quite reluctantly, I might add, because I was really at the

bottom of the pecking order. Having said that, I did their maths homework for them every night. So

that was the thing, that was what I had to do to be allowed to hang out. And I'd go back to the

mission every night with them and hang out and swim and swing on ropes and get further sunburned,

basically. And what did your family think of all of that? I mean, in your family home,

you know, what was the thinking about race, about gender?

You know, it wasn't something that was particularly enlightened, to be fair. And also,

my dad was just trying to survive his job, and my mum was sort of in a kind of, a bit of a funk

that she was an Ellen Boy, I think. I don't think they realised what I did after school.

And certainly, I would wander through the bushlands with my little brother on my own for hours

on end collecting tadpoles and lizards. And so it was one of those sort of very

laissez-faire childhood, shall I say, that these days, people would be a gas dad. But at the time,

it didn't seem that different to most of the people that I grew up with. So I didn't really have a,

you know, a strong kind of conversational relationship with my parents about politics or gender,

or anything really, or race for that matter. And of course, it was a really racist town. And I'm

sure my parents basically did not, you know, go out of their way to kind of counteract that,

so that they could fit in in the way that they needed to fit in as well.

I remember when I was in primary school, and I've talked quite a bit in interviews in the past

about an inspirational teacher, Mr Crow, who was both deputy principal and English teacher,

and really cemented in me a love of literature, of language. And I do remember when I was in

upper primary school, he got all of the kids to write plays, and he liked mine the best. And so

the other kids were forced to act in my play. My clear recollection is that their acting was not

at the quality calibre that it needed to be for my exemplary play writing work.

I'm just sitting in my set. You were a playwright before I was.

Well, that's the only time I've ever busted out anything that could be called a play,

and maybe even putting that word on a grade six project is really a bit of a big label for it.

But you from a very young age were writing stories, filling notebooks,

putting on plays for your local community. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, absolutely. When I say local community, my street, the history,

the plays were put on in my bedroom. People had to pay two cents to come and see them. So it

wasn't a big money. And I, having said that, I did put small plays on and dance routines,

and I wrote loads of stories, loads and loads of stories. But I also did an activity play every

Christmas that I would insist that, you know, the local kids from the street were playing various

roles in. But my poor siblings ended up having to play so many roles. And they just did what I

asked them to do because I was the big sister. So every year there was an activity scene. And

my parents were kind of like, I mean, it's astonishing now that it's just strange. It's coming into

our house to sit there and watch the two cents a ticket. I made tickets and everything.

I think the two cents go. Did you keep the two cents? I think I did.

You think I would have given it to charity, but no, I probably did hang on to it.

And, you know, I look back now and I think no one asked me to do this. I just decided to do it.

It seemed like a bit of a money at a time. And also I used to collect bottles. So I was a

recycled out before it was trendy. And in fact, it was a real money owner for my brother and I,

to be honest, like going around the streets and picking up sweat bottles and trading them in.

That was a big source of pocket money. So it was, you know, and that's not killed or when it was

back in the day, when it was quite a rough area, to be honest, then. And in fact, you know, when I

did my paper round and later when I rode my bicycle to a place called Ackland Street where they,

you know, they had bakeries and cake shops that I worked in most of those. You know, I used to get

flashed at all the time and things like that. And I had all sorts of tactics like I'd laugh at

rageously, but I'd be shaking on my bike thinking, I don't want to see that at 12, you know. So,

you know, it was a rough area. And I certainly, you know, I had to have my wits about me living in that

area because it wasn't like my parents were that vigilant. And I did ride my bicycle everywhere.

No helmets, nothing like that at the time, of course. But, you know, they're for the grace of God go,

I that I kind of survived it really. Yeah. Yeah. It amazes me looking back to. I'm in my sister and I

would leave the house on a school holiday day or a weekend and we'd go to the local park creek,

Branhill Creek. We'd go with two other girls and we'd be gone from just after breakfast. We take

sandwiches and we just knew we needed to be back, you know, so before dark. But yeah, four little

girls, no mobile phones, nowhere to contact you. Yeah, in a park all day, what could possibly go

wrong? And fortunately for us, nothing ever did. But yeah, a different time. But you obviously had

this interest and yet after you're schooling, you went on to study science. And is that because

you were figuring to yourself at a young age, playwright, author, no one, no one really makes a living

doing any of that. I've got to go to university and get a ticket. I mean, we didn't have books in

our house. So I didn't even know people like, I mean, I knew books existed, but I thought they were

library books. I didn't realize that people bought books and had them in shelves in their homes.

I think what was also interesting for me is, and you were talking about teachers before, is that I

had two really amazing teachers. I had one teacher. Both of them were people that dropped in for a

term at the school that I went to. One was a math teacher who just taught differently and he

taught in this way where he taught the beauty of mathematics. And that's really stayed with me.

And I was, you know, it's just a lucky kind of strike of nature that I was this really gifted

math student. And, you know, so math came very easy to me. So science kind of followed because,

you know, if you can do maths, everyone sort of heads you towards science. And I found that work,

you know, very just natural to me to be able to do. Having said that, what I loved about it was the

kind of beauty of how things worked out and how things had a kind of magical unity. So in a way,

what I loved about it was the conceptual version of it, which actually is what I love about plays.

And what I, when I did law, I did lots of conceptual law and the same when I did biological science.

I did immunology, which is very conceptual. So I think it actually just really tapped into what I

loved, which is thinking abstractly and conceptually. It wasn't, I mean, I'm terrible at accounting,

for example. So it can be great at maths, but terrible at accounting. So what I loved about it was

the beauty and elegance of a theorem or the sort of lovely way of maths problem or a calculus

problem works out so completely precisely and perfectly and has its own rules and it really

makes sense to me. But, you know, try and say that to most of my people, people that I work with

now in theatre and they all absolutely hated maths and sciences. And because they just never learnt

about the beauty of the concepts in a way. So I had that one teacher, Mr. Quinn, in, you know,

year seven who taught just a few of us the sort of brightest maths students. And we had this incredible

six-week period with him that really did change my life because I thought about it in a different way.

And then much later on in about year nine, we had a Jewish teacher come and teach at our school,

which was a Catholic school. So that was already unusual. And not only did she take us to synagogue

to show us different ways of thinking, she had us write creative writing. And she did one,

ironically, we're on a podcast now where we had to make a recording of a sort of monologue

in a way. And I wrote a monologue and recorded it. And she loved it. And she talked about it,

like, you know, and really praised me for it. I mean, I don't think I played it for anyone else

that she's the only person who ever heard it really. But I remember thinking, oh, I really want to

impress her. Like, she's a really thoughtful, wonderful teacher. And she likes what I did. And,

you know, I don't think I did anyone else I would trust to sort of play it for that they could like it.

And, you know, that was a real light bulb moment for me that, you know, those monologues can actually

make sense. And also storytelling can be from the first person. And, you know, I think that's

probably what set me off. But having said that, of course, I got to the end of my HSC, having mainly

done sciences and went and studied science at university. I did consider doing medicine,

but I was a bit terrified of dead bodies. And, you know, I came from a Catholic background. It was

sort of all a bit over the top. And I was a bit squeamish. But, you know, I actually enjoyed science,

although I have to say once I got to university to my university in Melbourne, I realized that my

education hadn't prepared me for the level of rigor of academia that, you know, I had to be

prepared for. So I had to work hard in university, whereas I didn't have to work hard at high school.

And that was a new concept because I didn't know how to learn. I hadn't learned how to learn

properly. I just naturally done it. So that was a bit more kind of figuring out why people are

taking notes in lectures and things like that. So that took me a little bit of adjustment,

but certainly adjusted. And then finished that science degree and did an honors year in science.

And I did it in immunology and microbiology. But immunology is very much a conceptual thing,

because you can't see it. You have to understand the concepts and what things show you about other

things. And I found that just absolutely fascinating. And of course, that's never presented me with

any conversation to have with any other human in the world until COVID. In which case you would

have been everybody's failures. Oh, it was amazing. Suddenly people understood what, you know,

like a T-cell was. I'm like, this is unbelievable. I can actually have a conversation.

Yeah, we're all baby immunologists. Yeah, everyone knows about it now.

Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same

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And so you went on this track. I mean, you clearly had capacities and interests

broadly, science, maths, but also creative writing, but went on this track, science,

but it had captured your mind by the sound of it, but not captured your heart.

I agree. Because you didn't go into a laboratory. You're not sitting here now as a globally

recognized immunologist. It would have been one pathway and we should note that we're sitting

in the studio of the Welcome Trust, the fun, health and medical research. Maybe we all end up

here in the end anyway. I'm sure this studio has been home to many globally recognized immunologists,

but you you were looking for something else and that brought you to London. I guess in an

Aussie gap year. Absolutely. But it brought you to London in a time that meant you could

explore who you were. But you could also rub shoulders with people who were pretty famous.

I'm thinking here of Boy George. Tell us that story.

Well, yeah. I mean, just to predate a diffraction, I then I basically left science and started

studying law and then did it and then took a year off to work over here. And also I did some

of my study at University of Toronto Law School, which I set up a kind of exchange. But when I lived

over here, it was just after I'd finished law school. And I and basically, yeah, I lived with

Boy George's dancers and he lived with us periodically. He had two homes that he'd go between,

you know, it was during his Harry Christianer phase. And the house, actually the house we lived in,

which was in Camden Town, which was, you know, at the time was pretty wild. I can tell you now.

I mean, I think Derek Jarman would drop around who I had no idea who he was. I think I remember

showing him my little mermaid crab, thinking he'd be interested. I look back now and I think

there was this great giant of film. And he's like looking at my little statue of the crab from

bloody little it's mermaid. I mean, I'm mortified now. But I was very young and you know,

quite innocent and didn't really, I mean, I just was never star struck like that. I just thought,

oh yeah, there's that boy, boy, man, boy George, who used to sing, you know, in culture club.

And now he's sitting meditating on our kitchen table. That's just how life is, right? And it was

a pretty run down old house, but it was a big mansion of a place just with, you know, lots of

shagpull carpets with cigarette burns everywhere and no heating. And it used to, and it belonged to

the Bay City Rollers. They lived there for years. So there were five sinks in the bathroom and it

had a kind of sort of X rock and roll kind of vibe to it with lots of tart and in various places.

So, you know, when I look back now, I realize it was quite a moment, you know, to sort of jump on

board and sort of see that I was in this middle of this very sort of intense cultural period of

London life, generally. But, you know, I was working around the corner at a cafe. Cafe Jalancey that

lots of Londoners will remember from that period. And also, sort of acting and writing and thinking,

do I really want to be a lawyer after all that? But then went back because, of course, I had massive

debts and went back and started work as a lawyer in Australia. But I guess all of that creative

vibe was very much who I was. And, but, you know, at the time, I mean, there's no way I could imagine

actually surviving as an artist at the time, other than working as a waitress. So when I had this

law degree and I felt like, you know, I also had this desire to do something good with my law degree.

So I came back and even though I didn't precisely go straight into human rights, I went to one of

those big law firms that can help you pay off your debts. I was there for 18 months and I was

utterly miserable. It just wasn't for me, corporate law. And I remember resigning from that and going

to the Aboriginal Legal Service, which was much more aligned with what I wanted to do with my

law degree. But you're right. The seeds for my creative life were already planted, then, I guess.

We've jumped over the transition from science to law. Yeah. I mean, at the end of your science degree

while law. And at the end of your law degree, sure, a diversion to London. Yeah. But the natural

thing would have been to go into the law that relates to science. Absolutely. So there's a big

field of law about who owns intellectual property and people make a lot of money in that field of

law. And if you've got scientific knowledge, you're very much valued in that field of law. Absolutely.

Why not that? Well, I did, that's what I did at Freheels, at Herbert Smith Freheels. I was in

the intellectual property section, but really it's corporate work. And I thought if I'm going to be

doing something scientific, I'd rather be a scientist. If I'm going to be doing something artistic,

I'd rather be an artist. If I'm going to be a lawyer, I'd rather fight for human rights. Like

the sort of compromise didn't give me anything. So I needed to decide what it was I felt passionate

about. And it wasn't about using law for science and art. That wasn't my gig. And when you picked law

post the science was the human rights passion, the reason you did it. Very much so. Yeah. And so what

happened is I was in a lab doing my honours here. And I was, I was already been offered a PhD

to do immunology, which I was really considering actually. And I remember the Chernobyl happened.

And I remember looking up from my microscope, along with all the other young scientists and older

scientists in the room and thinking, oh my god, this is like a political, you know, terrible thing

that's happened in these people, their lives are at risk. And everyone else started discussing

which plutonium, you know, we should be, you know, that had triggered the reaction and how the

reactor had decomposed. But I was like so interested in the politics and the human consequences and

the political consequences and what would happen next. And I just wanted to keep talking about that.

The radio was on with this news. And everyone else went back to their microscopes and I thought

I need to be able to talk. I am a human communicator. I'm not good at looking down a microscope all day.

Even though I enjoyed it, I felt that as I was growing into a woman, I was at a lot more to say.

And I really wanted to be able to communicate and talk and ask, ask questions of the world.

So I think that's probably, and then I'd always been interested in law, but you know, it was one of

those sort of like high for loot and professions. And I thought rather than do another three years

in a PhD, maybe I could go to law school instead and actually do some debating and questioning and

asking and see what I could do to change the world. I always had that weird thing that maybe it comes

from coming from a disadvantaged high school or even a social justice school that really talks

about that. But I really did have this sense that I have to do something that really affects and

changes the world. So with immunology, I thought maybe I could, I maybe I could cure cancer.

I didn't do that. Then I thought maybe I could, you know, go and fight for people's rights

with law. And then, you know, I said that was my next trajectory. And, you know, I liked that,

you know, as a woman that didn't have a kind of background of family sort of guidance, I guess.

It just came from within. I had to decide what I felt was important to me rather than just what

my parents thought would be a good thing to do. So in your legal career, you did make a huge

difference, whether it was at the Aboriginal Legal Service, whether it was public interest

advocacy, looking after the most disadvantaged, whether it was focused on women and women's rights.

But it sounds to me like you had the same kind of moment that I had during my legal career,

that the law is a fabulous lever for change. But at the end of the day, you're changing things

one case at a time. Well, you had that experience as well, maybe, you know, in a class action,

you can be changing it for a lot of people at once. But what the law says and how it applies,

and whether it is a just instrument is decided elsewhere, it's decided in politics, the

court of public opinion. I came to my legal career already politically active, I'd been politically

active in university, but it sounds to me like you hit a moment where you thought as meritorious

as what I'm doing is, you know, helping people who need help with their legal problems,

these got to be a bigger way. Am I right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that, you know, I sort of

drank the Kool-Aid at law school and thought this is the biggest way of making a difference in the

world. And then when I went out there, I mean, aside from my brief parlour into commercial law

with intellectual property, the Aboriginal Legal Service was an absolutely huge time in my life.

Like I learned so much, I felt that I had been denied so much information in my education and

just in my community about what indigenous communities were going through. It was a time when

really there was so much silence around it. And you know, it was the beginning of the stolen

children generation and I had so many clients looking for their, you know, birth parents and

lots of criminal matters and lots of civil matters and everything was steeped in racism and it was

just an extraordinary coming of age in terms of understanding what happens in racial, you know,

in a country that really had not acknowledged that because Marbo had only just come out.

So we should just explain for international listeners that in Australia, in this era,

you know, in the 1980s and moving into the 1990s, there was a reckoning with some aspects of what

the racism in Australia and what the colonial birth of Australia had done to indigenous Australians.

And there was a central case Marbo, which recognised that Australia wasn't a vacant landmass

when white people arrived, Captain Cook and all of that, but rather that there were indigenous

people there with deep connection to the land, prior custodianship of the land. And there was also

a recognition that there had been an inhuman policy in many parts of Australia of separating

indigenous children from their parents as a way of, you know, absolutely destroying kind of a

familiar link, basically. Yes, yes. And in the at best naive and often malevolent belief that,

you know, these children needed to be with white families and that it was about, you know,

a deep-seated racism towards Aboriginal families. So you were in all of that world of

shame. And at the Aboriginal Legal Service while that was coming to pass. And so it was an

incredibly formative period. And then after a while, I mean, it was also extremely stressful. And

then I moved to the public interest advocacy center where I tried what you mentioned, the idea of

doing test cases and group cases, which I thought and did have an impact. I mean, we did some really

amazing cases that changed the law. And then basically I just, I realised that I was really

interested in talking to humans and at humans individual stories. So I started working at the

Shotfront Legal Centre and Children's Rights Advocacy Centre with women and children. And also

young boys who were in massive trouble. And I would go to court every day. And I absolutely loved

court. There's no doubt about the fact that I enjoyed the court arena. But I realised that,

you know, I was making these impassioned pleas. And when I was successful, it was because I was

giving the details of a client's life, like not just saying, oh, my client was found abused and

they had a difficult childhood. I would actually give the utter details to the court and to the judge.

And so, and actually show that there was a way that we could divert them from the criminal

justice system for a period to see if they could actually have a chance of the state intervening

in a positive way, given that the state had never actually assisted them prior to that.

Well, they'd just been neglected for so long. And, you know, but each one of those was for one

person, which really mattered to that one person. There's no doubt about it. But there was no sort

of precedent laid. Or it wasn't like it was publicised. It wasn't on the local news. It wasn't even

what wasn't even, you know, acknowledged by anyone other than myself and the client. But I also

thought, you know, like if you could actually just show these stories to every day people, they would

say, that's not fair. And so, what I did was possibly because I had that kind of bug and I just

finished my masters in theatre and film out of pure joy of doing it. I then went back to Nida and

became a playwright. And I wrote a play based on those stories that, you know, I wrote it because

I needed to write it. And it was basically everyone's individual story so that you saw and you

were shown their lives rather than just their crime or just their disadvantage. You saw the kind of

the love and the disappointment and the sadness and despair and all of the things that make up a

human being so that when people drove through the Kings Cross, which is the red light district in

Sydney and Australia, they didn't just gawk and have some sort of warrior experience of pointing

out a prostitute or a drug user. They suddenly went, oh, that could be someone that I know. And that's

the most important thing I think you can do in any storytelling is to make the reader or the audience

or people that are experiencing it go, oh, this is not other anymore. This is part of my humanity

as well and what I should be caring about and what has actually moved me as a human being. So that

first play actually must have done that because I had so many people come out of the play saying,

I will never drive through the cross in the same way. I will now see those people and understand

their humanity and what's bought them there. And that meant so much to me. I can't tell you, Julia,

because I thought suddenly all those dinner parties I went to wherever I would say what they'd

done each week. And my husband would say, you know, you're the conversation ender because you'll

start talking about your clients, like the most normal thing in the world and you're going to go,

oh, I'm really depressed now. But I actually felt like I could put it all in a play with a bit of

humor because that always helps and also just real humanity and show the community that they had.

And that played transfer to the Sydney Opera House, which at the time I thought, oh, this is a

good career. This is a fun thing to do on the side, you know, the Sydney Opera House that's

funded whatever. And of course, now I realize that was a really lucky event. You know, that doesn't

happen very easily. And, you know, so but what happened is I then kept writing theater because I

thought, actually, this is a really big way to affect 500 people a night rather than one judge day.

But in Australia at the time, the impossibility of being a female playwright became so clear to me

and having come through the legal system where I understood discrimination. I worked in

discrimination law. I could see that no one seemed to understand that all of the programs had all

male playwrights and all male directors with the odd female sprinkled around. And I kept asking

people in theater, which is supposed to be the enlightened left wing kind of, you know, social

justice area. Like, why they know women playwrights? What's going on? And like one artistic director

actually said to my face without a hint of kind of irony or shame. Oh, women can't play right plays.

And I remember thinking, yeah, that's it. What do you mean? Like, this is crazy. And, you know,

I thought, well, I'll do a little scientific experiment, which I did. So I wrote a two-hander.

I set it in a hotel room and I sent it to a whole bunch of theaters in Australia. And I sent it to

one producer in Edinburgh who had a had a slate that he would put on at the assembly rooms each year.

And one theater in New York that I just knew of, because I'd read something that had gone on there.

And it went to both of those, both of those places. We're not in the Edinburgh Festival.

Did really well. Got great reviews. Went on as a completely different production at the Cherry

Lane Theatre in New York and got won this massive award for excellence in playwriting. And no one

in Australia ever got back to me. And I thought, oh, there's my own side. It's not me. It's

Australia. So I can write, because obviously the show does okay, but I'm in the wrong country.

And that's when I started moving over here, to be honest, because I thought I don't have time

on my side to wait until Australia catches up. But I was very much part of the strong advocacy

for women playwrights in Australia that has now become a normal thing to have a female playwright,

which is great. But you know, it's not that long ago. I'm talking 2008, you know, when it really

wasn't possible to have to be a female playwright in Australia and have any success.

Well, that is a depressing, but also unbelievably enlightening story.

Your life, I knew when I was preparing for this podcast that there was so many things,

so many threads that it was at risk of getting confusing, because you've got such a textured,

layered life. So I do want to come. A long one. I've been around a while. Yeah, both of us,

they come with new. But I do want to come to the playwriting and your incredible work. We've

already discussed some of your incredible work. But I feel like we've skipped over a couple of

things in your life. You know, one thing that we skipped over is you've done all of this academic

work, all of this legal work, but you're a human being in a human body. And in your early 30s,

you contracted viral encephalitis, which is actually a life-threatening brain illness.

You know, this is an illness in a person, as you've told us, who's basically been working,

since you were like eight years old, neatly putting papers on people's doorsteps instead of just

randomly chucking them vaguely at the fence. What did that mean for you? Do you know, so

few people really asked me about this, but there's had a profound effect on me. In fact, I feel quite

moved, even, having you talk about it in that way, because, you know, basically my brain was my

thing, that was where my gift was, where I had access to all the things that I wanted to do.

And you know, encephalitis is a virus in your brain. And I had absolutely cataclysmic kind of like

symptoms, where I couldn't feel half my body, where I couldn't judge where things were in

relation to me, where I had kind of, I felt like I was sunburned over my all my skin all the time.

Really weird, in fact, really weird symptoms, and went to see so many neurologists, had spinal

taps, had needles put in my eyes to figure out what my evoke potentials were. And basically,

that came, you know, I didn't have some of the more degenerative neurological problems. They

said it's basically a viral encephalitis, and we don't know what its trajectory will be.

So there's something about that unknowability, and recognizing that, you know, everything in my

life depends on the outcome of this. And it was a, I mean, I was with my husband, who was

there, my boyfriend, who was just the most incredible man, when I think back now, because I think I

said to him at one stage, you know, if I could leave me, I would be leaving me. I don't want to be

around this person anymore. Why the hell are you still here? You're crazy. I probably won't even

be able to have children after this. You know, I mean, I was so, I was really deathly ill,

and I was told I might not survive, and if I did, you know, what sort of damage I would sustain.

As it turns out, the only damage I have sustained is that I find it really hard to recognize people.

So, which is actually quite a hindrance in the career I currently have, you know, but, you know,

like that, that's all that I have that's a problem. But, you know, at the time, you know, when you

think that you're not going to survive something, or if you think that your brain's not going to

work the same way again, or even all the weird symptoms I had, I didn't know that they would go away.

I mean, nerve cells heal so slowly that one doctor said something amazing to me, and he said,

go and plant a bulb or a seed, and don't watch it grow because you can't watch a flower grow,

and that's what you're trying to do by checking every day where your symptoms are. Don't check

in every day, go and when you see that little, like, little pinch of green come up out of the soil,

you know your nerve cells have grown a tiny little, like, part of a millimeter, and you just

keep waiting for that to happen. And I actually went away and bought a seed and planted it and did

exactly that, and there was something about what I learned through that, because I am quite a

fast person. I really am hungry for life. I'm quite passionate and eager to do things quickly.

It did teach me to, like, listen to my body and to listen to my mind in terms of where I felt

and where I felt placed in the world, and also to be patient in a way that I had never been

patient. I was a very impatient person to just get things done and move forward and not miss out,

and there was, you know, I had a year I couldn't work at all, and everyone else around me was working,

and it occurred to me that without work I didn't have a community. You know, so I took it upon myself

in my slow period of recovery to sort of bake a cake and cross the road and sit with the old lady

across the road and share a cup of tea, which, you know, I hadn't done in my life, and, you know,

to go to yoga with other sick people and realise they were my new community. And so it gave me a sort

of sweeping compassion for all of the things that I hadn't properly seen in the world before,

in the same way that the Aboriginal Legal Service showed me an insight into Indigenous culture

that I hadn't personally experienced myself. And, you know, that, so, in a way, I mean, I remember

the time someone said to me when I was really ill, oh, you know, one of those sort of new age

periods in my life where someone said something along the lines, well, maybe you needed to get sick to,

you know, figure out what you wanted to do. And I went, I'm not needed to get sick for two weeks,

but not for a year. And I was furious because I thought, no one needs to get this sick. And I certainly

don't believe that at all now. It wasn't like, oh, that was meant to happen. It was an awful thing

that happened, but what came out of it was that I have a deep compassion for people that really

suffer from illness. I also understand that one day everyone will suffer from some sort of illness

or some sort of period in their life where their mental health is not strong, where their physical

health is not strong, where they've lost their way or they're feeling grief or whatever. And,

you know, I just think that very much part of the human condition, and we pretend it won't happen

to us until it does. And when it does, I often say to people that, you know, you play in your backyard

or your life, not knowing you're playing on the edge of a cliff until you fall over it. And then

once you've fallen over and climbed back up, you never played quite that close to that mortality again

because you know how easy life is to slip away. So I didn't take quite, I mean, I was always

riding my bike without a helmet, like I was a bit wild out at night. And I suddenly thought,

my life is really precious. And I really want to take care of, you know, like my body and my mind

and who I am and not sort of burn the candle at both ends or whatever. And, you know, people will

still accuse me of doing that, but they don't realize I have a safety net now that I've put in place.

And I think that it was, you know, I was only 30. I hadn't had a safety net before that. I didn't

really have anyone to kind of pick me up and sort of help me along my way. But I had really good

girlfriends and I had a partner who absolutely was strong and state-port and really wanted to

be with me even if this was my new permanent condition. And that was great, that was a great love

thing for me actually. And it's still, I still am reminded by the strength of character of that

person every day. You know, I look at him whenever I'm cross with him and think, yes, but remember,

he was the person that actually, and he tried in so many ways to keep me, he even once did this

wonderful thing, that he, he wasn't big on, he was a bit scared of horses, but I used to love

horse riding. And I remember we went on a horse ride and he had this old old horse called Fred

that he allowed to eat all along the way. So then he was like walking at like an absolute

snail's pace. But he'd come with me because even though he was terrified, he said, I knew that you

wanted to do it so badly. And those little offers from people are things that make you realize

that you're loved in the world. And, you know, I think about that often and think about how,

you know, on a daily basis, how I can show that to people that I care about that are having a

hard time as well. We're going to get your husband and accolade through this podcast. I'm not

sure what it's going to be called. Good husband of the year because there's another pivotal moment.

And that is out of all of this period, you ultimately face a crossroads moment. This is in 2009,

where you're offered a magistrate's position in Sydney. So, you know, being in magistrate's

court, it's a judicial position, safest houses would have had a salary for the rest of your life,

a nice pension. It's a different thing in London actually. Magistrates are not like judges here.

No, magistrates are not like judges here. So yes, in Australia, a magistrates job is a judicial

position. It's an office until retirement age and its pension and its well paid, a well paid

job. So, absolute security, magistrates position in Sydney or a residency playwright at London's

national theatre. It's a real fork in the road. It's a fork in the road and I think all of us

instinctively can understand the dilemmas in picking which fork in the road. You've got

your husband, your wonderful husband, you've got children. It's more children. It would disrupt

his career too. What do you do? Oh, we had family therapy. We did have to, I mean, you know,

my husband's no pushovers. So, you know, my law degree is quite handy in that regard. So,

we negotiated basically and we went and I said, you know, this is really important to me and before

we got married, I said that there was a certain period of time in our life where I wouldn't want to

live in Sydney if my career took me elsewhere and your career is here. But at the moment, my career

is taking me elsewhere if I choose to live in London and I need you to come with me and the children.

And, you know, he was horrified at first. He was like, what? Maybe for six weeks. I mean,

you know, it's a year to 18 months. That's what I would like to go for. And we should probably

background saying your husband is also a lawyer. And he was a QC at the time. So, he was now one

of Australia's most senior judges. So, he is now. So, it didn't do him any harm in the end.

He was worried at my, he's on our high court, which is the ultimate superior court in Australia.

And so, a brilliant legal career, but that kind of legal career requires being in place and

working your way up to be an ever more senior lawyer and ultimately an ever more senior judge.

Not that he told me that that was his aim, but it's probably when I said, well, if ever you wanted

to do something for your career, I wouldn't be so supportive if you can't be supportive of mine.

Now, I'm saying this because I wanted to say to young women who are talking about marriage

with men or relationships with men or even any partner, really, is that it's important to know

that that's not a big ask to say, let's like share that. Like if we're both ambitious or we both

want a career, it doesn't matter that one person earns more than the other person. Of course, he

earned a lot more than me at the time. I said, it's about us as a couple and as a family,

everyone having their moment where they can sell for, you know, they can be, or they can have

some autonomous decision making about where they would like to work and play and raise their children.

And it can't always be defined by, by finances or no woman I know would ever be able to do it.

And so, I really wanted to stick to that because, you know, all around me, people would constantly say,

oh, it'd be too hard for Robert. And I went, well, you know, I've been here with some raising

small children sitting without my family. That was too hard for me, but I did it so that he could

be here. Let's not forget that, you know, we're looking at apples and oranges, sure. But really,

everyone's prioritising the financially beneficial version of our life rather than the one that means

a lot to me right now. And, you know, he would look back now and he said it the other day. So,

I know for a fact that he does and my children do. And so that 18 months was the best time for our

family. And we really established our life in London. My children have strong connections here.

Robert has a Welsh family, so he had a lot of time in his family of origin in Wales.

And, you know, like, really, we have this incredible peer. We've got friends that we've known since

that period right up until today who are like our family here. And, you know, I'm here so much of

the time and Robert comes and goes. It's the other way around now. And, you know, but it was always,

it was, that was the moment where, okay, this is where I really have to actually be assertive about

the fact that just because your career pays the most doesn't mean it's the most important career

in our family. And we both are responsible for these children. And, you know, like sure it's a move,

but I'm not saying it's forever. I wasn't actually asking to immigrate. And, you know, he,

we, and we had a therapist come and talk to us, you know, one of those sort of like to say,

what is the decision going to be? And I could express why it was important and all of the things I'm

saying now. And because he was a lawyer and I could present it in a very well argued form,

I guess eventually he went, wow, I have to do this. This was the agreement. I don't think he

did it like cheering the whole way, but he certainly is the sort of person that even if it takes

a while to argue your point once he sees the point of it, he will follow through. And he definitely

followed through. And he was here for that period in spite of the fact that, you know, his,

his sort of colleagues at the law were obviously taking great strides ahead while he was in London

walking the children to school. And I was only hardly anything and we lived on a pound a day.

I swear we wouldn't she couldn't afford a coffee every day. So it was a really interesting time.

That's a fantastic story. I love it too that your husband was born in Wales. I was born in Wales.

I'm going to try. Well, he wasn't born there. He's the only one in his family that was born in

Australia, but all his family are Welsh. All his family are Welsh. I'm going to research now to see

if we relate to what we are.

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless

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We're going to turn back to where we started primafacy and that magic moment for me in the theatre

and whilst you are the playwright of many, many plays primafacy was the, you know, international

very big breakthrough. And for those listening who haven't had the privilege of seeing it,

the play follows Tessa, a brilliant criminal defense barrister who believes deeply in the law.

And she is ambitious, strong. This is one woman play and it starts with her showing what a

agile thinker she is, what a great barrister she is. She is prepared to do defense work

for people who have been accused of sexual assault and she delights, she delights in winning.

She's getting, you know, if she's doing the defense, getting someone off a rape charge that

brings her joy, she delights in winning. She believes in the rules and the game of law.

She does. She does. And she excels at it. And then the whole thing swings when she is sexually

assaulted and comes face to face with how this system, which she has found her place in and

succeeded in when this system fails her. And I saw the brilliant Jody Coma do this play and London's

West End. Jody Coma would be familiar to people from a very big body of work, but probably her

first really big global breakout was Killing Eve, where she... That's where I saw her for the first

hour. She's got a Northern accent herself. A Liverpool. A Liverpool. A Scouse accent. Yes, a Scouse

accent. But in Killing Eve, she plays this gun for higher assassin who is capable of imitating any

accent playing any character to basically kill the person she's been paid to kill. And despite all

of that, you're lover. I'm sorry. She's quite a remarkable. She's quite a remarkable series Killing

Eve. And she was unbelievable in this your play, Prima Facy, one woman shows. It's amazing.

Now your whole life, I think, had prepared you to weave together a story about women and women's

rights and women's perspective, a story about the law, a story about consent and about the interrelationship

of men and women and Prima Facy's got all of that. It does. But can you just take us back to the

origin of that? I mean, how did it come to you? Do you know I was recently talking to Professor

Catherine McKinnon, who is a scholar in the US who works at Harvard University. And when I was at

University of Toronto, I said to her in 1988, you came down to Toronto University and spoke to

the law students there, of which I was one. And your feminist critique of jurisprudence was like

a lighting bulb for me. It just like made me look at everything differently. And that was probably

the moment because suddenly the law that when you're a kid that doesn't come from a legal

family and you get in and you're doing well, I mean the thing is it's like the golden ticker.

You've actually made it. You actually feel like I'm actually with all these private school

students and all these wealthy families and I'm as good as them. And it's sort of proof

that you've made it. So you love the law because it gave you that possibility. It gave you

language. It gave you as a woman a chance to speak up and to speak up in a way that can demolish

someone's argument. I mean, all of those things when you don't come from power are an incredible

gift. And so when you suddenly see the fault in the law or the fault loans, it's quite devastating.

You don't want to see it. You don't want them to exist. And so you think how can I make this

not exist? But of course it's endemic in the law. I mean the law is defined by generations and

generations of men of white privilege, heterosexual, able-bodied men with a lot of money.

And so the way that they think about the world is completely contained within the legal system

and where it started and how it's developed. In fact, if we think about it right up until the

90s, women who were married were not able to be raped within their marriage because basically

by consenting to marriage, you were consenting to sex with that person when he wanted it at any time.

And so all of that stuff is crazy when you think of it now with the scope of how we live and

and our sort of feminism and just even being a woman in the world. So you know that that was her

her critique was so fascinating and she was such an intellectual and I bought her a book and sort

of devoured so much of her feminist jurisprudence. And then came back to Australia and to gender

and the law with Reg Gregor who's this incredible intellectual as well who's a very good friend of

mine now. I might add she's wonderful. But aside from that I then went into working with women

and young children and the every day after I came back from court where I would run those cases

that I was telling you about, I would take two to three really serious, sometimes more, sometimes

four to six really serious sexual assault statements from someone that would be applying this

for victims compensation. But in this instance they would be giving me their statement in full

with tears and like tissues and maybe a social worker cringing on the edge of the seat because they

hadn't heard it before. And they would tell me their story and I would write down the statement

so that I could apply for them to have access to a fund that pays for sexual assault counseling.

So the only reason that you do this is to get access to sexual assault counseling.

And who else wants that other than people that have been sexually assaulted? So there's no reason

to lie to me because all you're getting is sexual assault counseling and they were so believable

and you know not that I can be the arbiter of truth because I was just taking a statement.

But by the time they if if they took it forward and only one in ten women will actually take it

to the police but if they take it to the police and if the one in ten of them actually end up in court

not a single one of those women whose statements I took ever got over the line where they had a

conviction and I thought there's something profoundly wrong because I was the first person they told

and I know what they went through and I wrote it out for them and it was really deathly clear.

Exactly the trauma that they experienced and how some of them were horrific.

Like some of them were gang rapes. I mean we're talking and we're childhood rapes. I mean

things that were certain they had details and sure there were lots of bits that were mixed up

but also they all told me the same story that they froze their psyche couldn't catch up with

what was happening to them. They couldn't believe this person they trusted was doing something

et cetera et cetera. Most of them were people they knew the odd one was some of that they'd

met at a pub or someone outside while you're having a cigarette or whatever. Anyway the stories

were so similar that they started to merge into the same type of story and I would talk often

to like other defense lawyers about how I think sexual assault and rape is there's something wrong

with the system. It makes you prove not only did did the woman not consent but that the man

knew she was not consenting. You have to prove and as the prosecution you have to prove those two

double negatives basically that double negative and I said you know how I mean why is consent

something that you have to prove is that you have to say although we prove they weren't consenting

surely you assume someone's not consenting until they consent. We've got it backwards but all

of the defense barristers I knew they're all men and they were like oh no you're just being you know

that's how it is and otherwise how would anyone ever know what was someone was thinking and blah blah blah

and I thought it's not that difficult to ask someone you know is this okay it's four syllables I mean

it's not a big deal. Anyway and I thought about this long and hard and I would have loved to have

written this play before I wrote it but I think it had my craft had to get to a certain point

and I had to find the form which was the one woman show that I really wanted to make and then it

just came out of me and one of those passionate kind of you know like moments where I wrote all day

and all night in the sort of dark offers of mine after I had a fight with my whole family because

no one would help me with the garage sale. There I am you know writing it all out thinking this

is coming from a place of absolute you know fury with a system that I believed in and I wanted to

be a good system and when I wrote it I remember putting it down and I remember thinking to myself

well this is going to be an impossible pitch can you imagine going to a theatre company saying

I've got a one woman show it's about a rate but there's some parts in it that are a bit funny

and I thought no it's ever going to put that on like what a ridiculous play that I've written oh well

maybe my friend Sam Austin who's now the governor general of Australia maybe her daughter who is in

one of my god daughters maybe Loshy will do it she's a lovely you know at the time she was a young

acting student and I thought maybe she'll do it in a local theatre somewhere sometime you know

that'll that'll be exciting because it'll be on and then before I knew it it won this award in

Australia and it went on in Australia to great acclaim with the incredible Sheridan Harbridge

and the wonderful Liloist directing and then I sent it to the contact that I'd made in London when

I was coming and going because I had another play in London and another play in Edinburgh and he

just got back to me and said I wanted it on the West End straight away and it was just you know it's

you know like it's the relationships you establish for years and years that you that you go back

to and you keep talking and you keep thinking about who you work with and what you'll bring to them

and and I just sent it to him because it's done really well in Australia I didn't even think

you'd want to put it on I just thought he wants to keep in touch with my work I'll send in my

latest play and he said I said what you want to take a one woman show to the West End like just

like that and you know it was astonishing really and Justin Martin who's the director I was very

committed to working with because I met him when he did a show called The Jungle which was a

human rights show basically about refugees in Calais and I thought this guy's great he's got a

really great way of thinking about I didn't know anything about him someone he someone gave me his

number so you should call him and have a meeting because he's lovely you like him I had two massive

bags on my way back to Australia and he called me because we'd been trying to we'd been paying

phone tag and he said this is before we were definitely taking it to the West End and he said oh

you know do you want to meet up I heard you know you like I've got your message and I said oh I'm

about to fly to Australia I've got two massive bags I'm overweight I'm really like I'm scared I'm

gonna have to pay extra money and he said well I'm actually we're which which airport I said he

throw and he's like well I'm I mean Hammond Smith why don't you drop by in the way and let's just

have a coffee at the local coffee shop and I remember holding the two enormous bags and thinking oh

I can't go into coffee shop with these I'll just maybe next time but I thought you know what you

got a fortune favors the bold you got a jump while the iron you know you got a jump while the

possibility exists and I mean yeah okay and so I drag these enormous suitcases into this coffee shop

had the best conversation with this amazing director and we just he just got something amazing about

the play and what he did in the end of the play were all the lights come up on all the different

folders indicating that all the folders you've seen throughout the play are basically the silent

the women that have been silenced he came up with that after he'd read it straight away and I went

you're the person to direct it you so see what I need people to see and you know and he didn't know

my producer but I introduced them and then you know Jody came on board and it was a very organic

loving process and that group of people all the designers all the artists I mean they're just

top of the tree they're the most incredible incredible artists and really really wonderful friends

and family for me now incredible and of course you haven't stopped there I am very conscious

that we're only going into a couple of plays you're very big big volume of work so we only have

time to go into a couple of plays but certainly I'm going to refer everybody to a much bigger volume

of work but your most recent play in terralia continues the themes that were in primacy it's not a

sequel it's not the same character or anything like that but it takes a different lens on the same

set of issues it tells the story of Jessica who is a mother she's also in the law she has a teenage

son and you channel the emotions many women have about their sons which is they of course want

their sons to be good boys and great men but there is also this fear what would happen if they

were accused of sexual assault or some form of misconduct and through the play in terralia you

hold that up to the light what that fear is like and how a family responds and once again there's

the interplay of the law and a family perspective can you talk to us about how interralia came to you

yeah absolutely so it came to me I had there was a canadium and who sadly has passed away since

I spoke with him but he was the partner of a friend of mine who I'd met in Canada and they

came down to see my play in New York when it was on Broadway primacy that is and he said you

know it's easy and maybe because he's Canadian I was really open to hearing what he had to talk

to about something because he said you know in my day I'm mortified to think that in fact you

know the way I grew up it was we were thought we were taught to think that you know women were

never going to sort of agree to sex because otherwise they'd look like they were being too loose

and the reality is that we were supposed to sort of push harder and kind of convince them that

they were so attractive that you know they sort of had to come around to having sex with us

and he said and I look back now at my life in my 20s and I'm a bit anxious I mean I think it was

all consensual but wasn't and I thought how that might be the key to how so many men I know will

not talk about this stuff they're all a bit terrified of being called being called out so as a

consequence what are we doing as a community when the men who were supposed to be like women have

sons and they raise them as young feminist sons until they're sort of 14 or 15 but then who

takes over the templating for masculinity what is masculinity is the thing that we're worried about

not not maleness but masculinity in the way it's defined and I think it's really interesting because

if those fathers have that kind of anxiety they're not going to talk to their sons about their

experiences or failures or what the what it is because they don't quite they're just going to be

they're a bit quiet about it and so what what are who are their templates who are their mentors

and I mean where are the people that step in when women are actually slightly sidelined about

masculinity and there's no one it's left to sort of pornography and sort of peer groups and

you know football talk I mean there's none and I think where are the big brothers and the godfathers

and the dads and the kind of walks around the block where we talk about real stuff and actually

we're letting the whole community down by not having that in place we're letting girls down because

we're letting loose these new sexual kind of entities that have really mixed up ideas about

sexuality and how you actually have sex with a woman and what you know what they what they think

consent is but we're also letting down the boys because they're going to have no real intimacy

or life if that's what they think is normal and that's what they're experiencing as normal

and so I did a lot of research and I read a lot and you know I thought this is the killer this is

one of the ways that we as a community need to make a difference and it really is about accountability

and knowing that it's not just about if I want sex I get sex and you know if they cry rape that's

just them being horrible or and you know often in court barrageous will always cross examine

like a complainant in sexual assault or rape based on you felt dumped by him didn't you this is

your revenge or you're punishing him because he moved on and you didn't or you and I think

actually in this day and age when women if anyone feels rejected and wants to punish someone

they'll just cancel them on social media or they'll just basically like swipe in the other direction

on a dating app they don't need to go to court the three years of a horrible experience and

then be cross examine in front of the world your motivation is wrong if you think that is why

you think women are making this stuff up for that reason that's crazy and that's the reason

from all time that people of cross examine women about sexual assault and rape by the idea that

they have some other agenda that they're harboring that they're making this up to destroy some man

and you know that is passed on through the generations to younger men and they think

you know women this that and the other breeds a misogyny and a lack of understanding about

different lived experiences between between all genders and the idea that actually you're not

entitled to access somebody's body until they give you actual consent to do that and it's in your

interest for a healthy intimate relationship to know that there's a communication and to say is

this okay is not a big deal it's like I mean so many men say oh what you're going to just

destroy sex by saying this no you know that everyone has to stop and check in I go is this okay

is something you should be saying anyway just because you want to feel what the other person's

feeling and know that they're actually still with you in that process and you know like if we're

raising young boys surely we owe them and the women they're going to sleep with going forward

that level of kind of community and understanding and I feel like you know this anxiety about talking

about sex is bizarre but also where does it come from why are we also anxious when we know our

children are going to go out there and have sex to talk to them about this sexuality and what

porn they watch and why and what the context of that is and you know it's a really important

conversation and so what I wanted interaliere to do is to really inspire basically men to start

walking around the block and talking to young boys in their lives about and not just about I was

great at football and I did this and I did that and this is the way to be successful talk about

your heartbreak talk about when you felt vulnerable talk about the time that you failed because all

boys are going to go through that and if they only ever get told about you know my dad was really

great with the women I mean they're going to try and emulate that in a way that's not that's

hostile towards any sort of intimacy so I just felt like that's what I wanted to do with that play

and I was so thrilled when when men came out of that and said I'm going home to walk my son

around the block right now because I've never had this conversation and I think you know like

let's give young boys something to work with rather than expecting them to raise themselves on

the internet really. Absolutely such an important play now time is growing short but I've got to

ask you this I've heard rumors that this is going to be a trilogy is there another oh well they might

be yes absolutely I've never told anyone this but I'm very keen because ultimately the law

is like the law is an organic thing and it's changed by us as a community and our values

but I feel like we live in a community where we're not examining the rate myths and the myths

that we all bring to that that discussion of a judgment and so I feel like we have to start with

the jury and say what what do juries understand and what do they bring into that jury room

that is basically what a community around a dinner table would bring like a mixed community

around a dinner table would bring and what are the what are the things that affect their judgment

and so many of them are rate myths like well she went out and had a drink you know like so what

how many people are going to go I mean so few rapes are like someone in their school uniform drag

behind a bush I mean they're shocking terrible rapes but they're fairly cut and dry I mean no one

saying consent if you and also there's a statutory rape you know if you're under 16 but I guess the

thing is that there seems to be so much even as mothers women do it till we all do we say do I

do it all don't go out looking like that and you think why but they're not actually asking to be

raped this is crazy like why are we putting the responsibility always on the girls and on the young

women like why are we expecting them to sort of tailor the response that men have to who they are

we should be starting with a community education campaign that says hang on let's examine those

concepts that we bring our daughters up with that make them somehow feel shameful about who they are

because they're attractive or because they want to be attractive or because they just want to go

out and have fun and have a drink so I just wanted to start with the jury so think about 12

angry men and think 12 angry women know it's not 12 angry women but it's actually like a cross

section of community and all the different kinds of things that come into that jury room that

we're not privileged to see but it's actually what's happening in everyone's home around the country

right now that they've got there they go yeah I don't believe in it but you know it's all that

yeah you know I know that you know like obviously you know men who do but you know you can't be

expected to dot dot dot and so I think what are those what are those words and let's see whether we

can dissect them and interrogate them and challenge them within a jury setting and also there's also

another little thing that happens within that so I'm working toward it now but it'll be a long

little bit it'll be a while it'll be a while so I will have to wait but it's going to be fabulous

when it gets here oh thank you thank you for trusting me with that and thank you for this

incredible conversation it's been a great deep conversation thank you for the bravery you've

shown in your life to pick the path that enabled you to do this kind of work which I know is

speaking loudly into the world absolutely so thank you for that now of course Virginia wolf is

up there in the sky or somewhere in feminist heaven and she's looking down on us and this podcast

is inspired by her a room of one zone a podcast of one zone so we always finish up with a quote

from Virginia the quote I've chosen for you is nothing has really happened until it has been

described oh I love it I love it and thank you thank you and I think just on that your speech

to parliament about misogyny had never really happened until you made it and then it just ignited

a whole you do well my quote to you is from my own play which is which is once you see you can't

unsee and I think that that sort of invokes all of us to go right let's go forward and make the

change that we want to see in the world and thank you for doing that Julia really appreciate it thank

you and thank you for helping us see a podcast of one zone is created by the global institute for

women's leadership at the Australian National University Canberra with support from our sister

institute at King's College London earnings from the podcast go back into funding for the institute

which was founded by our host Julia Gillard and brings together rigorous research practice and

advocacy as a powerful force to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to

leadership research and production for this podcast is by Becker Shepard Alice Higgins and

Alina Eekot with editing by Liz Keane from headline productions if you have feedback or ideas

please email us at g-i-w-l at a-n-u dot edu dot a-u to stay up to date with the institute's work go to

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acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to

land, sea and community we pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that

respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today thanks for listening

and we hope you'll join us next time

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