The Seix Barral Seal publishes in Spanish its famous work ‘Prima Facie’
Suzie Miller worked for years as a lawyer. His experience in court earned him to write one of the most acclaimed theatrical monologues of the last decade. It’s about ‘Prima facie’, that premiered in 2019 in Sydney; In 2022 at West End and 2023 on Broadway, the same year that Vicky Luengo starred in Spain. Specialized in human rights, rights of the child and more vulnerable people, Miller approached many cases sexual aggressions. And it was precisely giving them legal coverage when he discovered that the system had serious and serious inequality errors.
This is how Luz Tess saw, one of the most successful lawyers in the country, someone who is accustomed to winning all the cases he faces. However, everything will change for her suddenly when she becomes a victim of sexual assault and tries to get justice. That is the story that Suzie Miller Plasma, this time as a novel, and that has just published the Seix Barral Seal in Spain. Its cinematographic version will premiere in summer.
From the stage to the novel, why?
When I wrote the work, I had to leave out so many things. The first draft I wrote would have lasted three hours on stage. I had to cut a lot, with the intention that all that is part of a book. I have deepened in Tessa, speaking a little of his youth, previous experiences that in the work had no place. And it was the first time that I wanted to tell people more about the character. It has also been my first time this process in this regard. And it seemed very interesting because each actor, actress in this case, who interprets it brings him his own. That inspires me. For example, Tessa has no skin color, we don’t know what race it is, we know the social class to which it belongs.
Do you feel playwright before narrator?
My stories come first from the theater, because it is a forum of ideas. I have always been a theater animal, I love the pure and hard character and I love to leave a strong mark and a impression on the public, but being a novelist I have also found immense beauty. You can write without the director in mind, without an actress in mind, with no one to tell you ‘No, no, it is very long, here cuts’ or ‘this will not work on a stage’.
It has been wonderful to write this. I have lived it, I enjoyed it. He wrote eight, nine hours a day. I love it, I freed myself a lot, I got a lot in the character.
How do legal truth and literary truth live?
All this began because when I studied law I read these cases, I saw how they were triggered and thought: it is supposed to be the objective truth, right? You are looking for a very specific truth, in a very specific way, but the law is not science. The law is to protect men, basically. In cases of sexual aggression, they are very clear what their rights are. In the 90s in Great Britain they ruled out the fact that raping the wife was possible, because you have married that man and therefore you have always consented sex with him always
Tess is an infallible lawyer to which he will even cost him that he has been sexually assaulted. His heroine suffers a paradox.
That is the character’s conflict. Not only has to demonstrate a crime that happened to her, that she did not give the consent, but also demonstrate that he did it on purpose, that he had a group of people around to ensure that this truth is the one that was sustained. Here is a literary derivative … in law, when you tell a story and according to what story these are two different facts. And it is not the judge who decides who is believed. It is the jury, who, influenced not only for how that story has been told and the other, but also by the questions of the lawyers and how lawyers use a different tone and how they ask the questions differently to make it seem that it seems that That person lies.
We have recently seen a very situation in Spain. Similar in a trial for sexual aggression. What does he attribute it to?
With a victim of sexual aggression many stereotypes are used, many myths. Men think that only women carry lingerie when they leave because they look for mess and look for sex. They do not realize that the woman can wear that lingerie every day, at all times, because she likes it, because it is their intimate clothes, because it is so. And what was used in court, which was for how to underestimate, that can no longer be done because you cannot rely on a myth, or a stereotype, or a legend.
What does violation involve as a conflict? Depending on who counts, it can be accepted or refuted.
Violation is the most complicated part of the legal system. There are two people who may be telling the truth. The woman can say ‘I did not consent’, ‘I was raped’ and the man can say ‘I thought he consented’ and the two may be telling the truth, possibly. The problem is why we have a system configured like this. Because it has served the patriarchy so far. Men defend themselves by saying: ‘Well, we are not going to sign a contract before having sex’. If you are in an intimate situation, exploring the body of another human being, you have the obligation to behave like a human, not as a contract. It is a trust relationship is fine asking and checking if the other person is comfortable. And there is another problem too. According to the patriarchy, for a man, if you have said yes once, then that’s it.
At what point in the exercise of law did you influence you?
I had many conversations, because I defended, I used to defend criminals. Many did not come from an easy background. And then I said, well, I don’t know if I can reject a person who claims to be a victim of a violation, because when you ask these questions … for example. Sometimes panties are taught. ‘You wore this, right?’ ‘Because, then, you consented.’ Are intentions attributed for certain clothes you wear? You don’t have to presuppose anything. And I wanted to highlight that double standard, right? How women and men are seen in the world and how difficult it is even that men understand that they have no more rights and that the thing does not go to them.
The system depends on the jury, which is integrated people from the community, on the street. The double ratings that we have as a community are reflected in that jury. Not only have you the two versions of victim and alleged aggressor and the prosecutor and the defense lawyer, you have the myths that are already with the jury and they are locked up in their room and everything they have heard all their lives, right? Ah, of course, he looks, he was on the street so late, hey, he has searched, what do I know. That is just what happens in this story.
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