Prima Facie

Tessa Ensler is an ambitious young lawyer in her thirties who, coming from a working-class background, has risen through the ranks of Britain’s highly competitive, class-conscious education system to achieve an outstanding professional position: in the High Court of Justice, she is a criminal barrister (primarily) of men accused of rape or sexual assault. She is trained to think in compliance with the law shaped by centuries of patriarchy: the words of the victim, who is usually a woman are a source of doubt, and they are disqualified, particularly when cases fall into a gray area; when it is one person’s word against another’s; if the victim knew the perpetrator and/or was even in a personal relationship with him. Tessa enjoys her job until one day it happens to her: a co-worker with whom she is just beginning a romantic relationship brutally rapes her during a drunken night. Tessa suddenly finds herself on the other side: she does not want to be a victim; she realises that, as her rapist’s advocate, she would take a completely different stance—and yet she decides to report the case and go to court—at the cost of suffering, humiliation, and even the fact that she will almost certainly lose.

The monodrama Prima Facie by Suzie Miller, an Australian playwright and lawyer—whose Latin title is drawn from legal terminology and means “at first sight”—became a hit right from its world premiere in Sydney in 2019. In 2022, the play premiered in London’s West End at the Harold Pinter Theatre, starring Jodie Comer as Tessa. The London production was nominated for Laurence Olivier Awards in five categories and won two: Best New Play and Best Actress. In 2023, the production moved to New York, to Broadway, where Jodie Comer won a Tony Award for her performance. Prima Facie is an exceptionally well-written play that, according to the author, could only have gained acclaim following the global launch of the #MeToo movement; the text transcends the function of a work of art and fundamentally questions the very concept of Western law, which is shaped from a male perspective. The monodrama Prima Facie, which demands an enormous emotional, artistic, and technical effort from the actress, as she is completely alone on stage (just as her protagonist is isolated in her conflicting emotions and views), has already been staged to great acclaim and performed by top-tier actresses in Germany, Spain, France, Serbia, Austria, Iceland, Mexico, Brazil, China, the Netherlands and Hong Kong.

Lucija Trobec (1995) is a representative of the younger generation of Slovenian theatre directors. After earning a degree in Comparative Literature from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, she completed her studies in theatre directing at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT), University of Ljubljana, with her thesis production The Lady from the Sea in 2025, where she directed several acclaimed productions (O, My Co-Existence, Uncle Vanya: A Study, Crime on Goat Island, Figurae Veneris Historiae). At the SNT Drama Ljubljana, she participated in the Teen Writing Competition programme and collaborated with the Week of Slovenian Drama; at the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, she directed The Tenth Daughter and How the Teacher Really Works, and she regularly contributes to the cultural programme of her hometown with theatre productions and workshops.