The Play That Heard Us
From Prima Facie to Inter Alia, Suzie Miller makes us face the system head-on
There are some stories you don’t just watch - you carry them with you. Prima Facie is one of those stories.
If you’ve seen it, or even just heard someone try to put it into words, you’ll know what I mean. Jodie Comer stands alone on stage for the entire play, but it never feels like she’s alone. She’s talking to us - not just as an audience, but as people who’ve lived in a world where the legal system doesn’t always feel like it’s working for us.
She plays Tessa, a sharp, ambitious barrister who’s worked her way up from a working-class background. She’s brilliant at her job. She knows how to dismantle witness testimony. She knows how the law works. And then something happens - something she can’t just argue her way out of. And suddenly, the system she’s spent her whole life defending doesn’t defend her.
There’s something gutting about watching someone who believes in the rules realise that those rules aren’t built for everyone. Especially not survivors. Especially not women. Especially not when it comes to sexual violence.
Prima Facie doesn’t tell us what to think. It shows us how it feels. The shock. The shame. The loneliness. The fury. And it holds that discomfort - without looking away.
For a lot of us, that hits deep. Because we know what it’s like to feel powerless in the face of systems that are supposed to protect us. We know how exhausting it is to explain something traumatic and still not be believed. To be asked for more proof, more details, more strength than anyone should have to give.
That’s why this play matters. Not just because it’s well written or beautifully acted - but because it says things we often don’t know how to say. It puts pain into words and demands that people sit with it. And sometimes, that’s where change starts.
Suzie Miller - the writer behind Prima Facie - has brought another story to the stage this year. It’s called Inter Alia, and it stars Rosamund Pike as a High Court judge who has to juggle everything: her career, her family, her friendships, her feminism - and the weight of the decisions she makes in court.
This time, we’re not in the shoes of someone fighting against the system. We’re inside it. We’re looking at what it means to be part of something powerful, to benefit from it, and to question it from within.
It asks: Can you hold power and still hold yourself together? What happens when your values don’t match the role you play in public? And how do you live with the tension between justice and reality?
Where Prima Facie feels raw and personal, Inter Alia appears to plan to take us into the quiet, complicated spaces where hard choices are made. And maybe that’s what we need right now - not just stories of survival, but stories of reckoning. In cinemas from the 4th September ‘25
At Make Yourself Heard, we often discuss reclaiming space. Speaking up. Making art. Starting conversations that make people uncomfortable - because silence has never kept us safe. These plays do exactly that. They open up a conversation about justice that’s bigger than one courtroom or one person’s story. And they remind us that law isn’t just something that happens in books or on the news - it happens to people. To us.
Whether you’ve been through the system, are still navigating it, or are just trying to make sense of it all, there’s something in these stories for you. So if you watch Prima Facie in the cinema, or go to Inter Alia this year, don’t just see it as a performance. See it as a mirror. A provocation. An invitation. Because art can do more than move us. It can help us speak.
Have you seen Prima Facie, or are you planning to watch Inter Alia?
We’d love to hear how it landed with you - whether it cracked something open, gave you words for what you’ve lived through, or left you full of questions. Write to us. Send a drawing. Record a voice note. Whatever feels right. This is your space.
Submit to M.Y.H Journal: jadeblue@makeyourselfheard.org
Make Yourself Heard. We’re listening.
