113. An interview with Suzie Miller

The law wants clean lines and final answers, but people live in grey areas. We sit down with Susie Miller, the playwright behind Inter Alia and the writer of Prima Facie, to unpack what “binary justice” does to real human stories and why courts can struggle when truth, trauma, and context refuse to fit a neat box. Drawing on her background in criminal defence and human rights law, Susie explains how the common law system can chase certainty like science, even when human behaviour is anything but predictable. 

From there, we move into the world where many boys are actually learning what power, sex, and relationships mean. Susie talks about the manosphere, online “bro culture”, and the way pornography has become a default form of sex education. We explore how consent myths survive, how “no” can be misread as part of a game, and why the lack of trusted adult conversations leaves teenagers competing for status rather than learning care, communication, and respect. The discussion gets practical and urgent as we examine how some extreme behaviours are being normalised and why silence from fathers, older brothers, coaches, and mentors can leave boys with only peer pressure and algorithms for guidance. 

We also dig into why theatre can be a powerful engine for social change. Susie shares what she learned in court about the force of storytelling, and why live performance creates a rare kind of community empathy that streaming cannot replicate. We touch on the audience reactions that surprised her, the responsibility men feel after watching the play, and a possible future work that interrogates juries and the myths we bring into the justice system. Subscribe for more conversations about law, gender, consent education, and cultural change, and if this one stays with you, share it and leave a review.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hey everyone, welcome to Repp of Justice, the podcast from the view. Today we are talking with Susie Miller, playwright of Inter Alia, about the impact of her play, binary justice, and the male upbringing. So the first question that I wanted to ask you is about the themes of Inter Alia. One of the themes in Inter Alia is how the law tends to see things in black and white, guilty, not guilty, right-wrong. Do you think inter alia challenges that binary approach?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

It really attempts to challenge that, but also to show the fault line about things being seen in such a binary fashion as well. I feel that what the law does, and it's interesting because having also looked at the civil law, which is basically the inquisitorial system of Europe compared to the one in Britain and the common law countries of the world, they both try to get to the truth in very different ways. And the way that the common law system tries to get to the truth is to make it, attempt to make it like science with absolute answers. And of course, that's just not how human beings are. So it's an interesting, interesting thing to examine that we try to create answers that can only be yes or no, and we all know those sorts of answers are very difficult.

How Boys Learn Masculinity Online

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah, it can get very messy and it's rarely black and white. Yeah, absolutely. Mm-hmm. So, how did you research into how boys are socialized through pornography and male role models? Uh, and did anything that you read about shift how you wrote Michael or Harry?

Consent Confusion And Male Fear

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah, you know, it's interesting to me is that the key was really Michael, not Harry, because I think Harry is a typical boy that's being socialized by the internet rather than by conversations with trusted individuals or adults that are older than him. And I think that the sort of brozone and the sort of manosphere and kind of the boy culture that has not been interrogated appropriately by anyone, really. I mean, we might sort of talk about it somehow, but we don't actually interrogate it, we don't actually take it apart or find ways for it to be a safer place so that boys can actually not have to subscribe to certain ways of being in order to sort of subscribe to masculinity. And I think a lot of it comes to me down to not how boys are born, it's not about men, it's about how we define masculinity. And I think the more we define it as something that has at its heart a misogyny and a secret telling about women and an idea about women that's reduced to body parts, and the way that women and jokes are told in sort of locker room banter. Women don't have access to those spaces to interrogate that. So you think who is interrogating it? And it seems that no one is because the the the next generation of men also grew up that way, and even if they don't agree with it completely, they don't know how to interrogate it or they haven't thought hard enough about how to. And so part of interalia was me coming to terms with the fact that the men of my generation and younger than me as well, and are not really playing a proper role in terms of templating for younger men exactly what it means to be a good man. And I think that women basically raise boys, and I'm actually the mother of a boy and I'm the mother of a girl, so I see it from both perspectives really. And I think that all the women I know that are raising boys are hoping to raise boys that understand how to respect women and understand feminism and understand concepts around having good relationships and communicating and also not creating a war between genders and between the binary factors of genders. Of course, there's also all sorts of non-binary genders that we're not even, I haven't even got to that yet. But you know, the idea that women are part of their lives, and up to a certain age, boys are taught to think about women and girls in a certain way, they're then thrown into the sort of adolescent deep end where their peers are not talking about women in the same way, and the and the information that they're subject to online is certainly not. And you know, the internet has so many great uses, but one of the things it does is have a very subversive way of talking to young boys, and often that's about women and making women the butt of their jokes, making women the reason that they're not getting access to certain things, which is ridiculous when you think about how so many generations of men have had all the access to everything. But I think what's really interesting to me was when I had a conversation with a man who sadly has died since this, I found out recently. But he was the partner of a friend of mine in Canada who I knew who came up, they came up from New York to see my show. And I had a conversation with him after the show. And the fact that he's Canadian somehow meant something to me because he was quite open about, you know, like trusting me with what his thoughts were about prima facie. And he said, you know, what is the solution about all these women having such sexual violence in their lives? And then he said, you know, I'm scared that as a man in my early 50s, and of all the men that I know, I mean, I think we're all a bit quiet about taking action because we're all a bit scared of that being called out and cancelled ourselves. And the reason we're scared is we don't know how to talk about what we were up to in our 20s. And even though I don't believe I sexually assaulted or raped anyone, I can't be sure it wasn't coercive at times, because I guess what they were told was that women who refuse sex are the ones that you keep chasing rather than thinking that they're saying no. And so the confusion about what is yes and what is no is something that men of a certain age still have, and I'm not sure if they look back on their own sexual history, how many times they convinced someone to have sex with them that really might not have wanted to. And I think that that conversation is now very much out in the open, but they're not having it with each other, and they're most certainly not having it with their sons or the young men that they have some care of. And so, because you know, one of my big aches when I wrote this was, what are men doing? Like women are trying to raise these good boys, these boys, not good boys, but boys that are spirited and able and can have conversations, and then somehow the patriarchy gets to them in their teens and they're no longer talking to their mother. So who are they talking to? And if they're not talking to informed men that are prepared to answer their questions, then they're getting their answers online.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah, I think you explained that really well.

Men Stepping Up For Boys]

SPEAKER_00 6:43

The other thing is that, you know, like if you think about pornography and how it's absolutely everywhere now, like 24-7 online, you know, it and increasing in its kind of capacity to sort of try to arouse young men and to attempt to show them all sorts of different things that are possible. The the but young boys are using it as education, not just entertainment. And they're not even even asked to interrogate what they're watching. So, for example, if you're watching even basic kind of porn, they're not asking how did it come about that this is on my screen? And the other thing they're not asking is when the woman on the video says no and then is convinced to have sex, or worse, is actually raped on in the porn site, what they don't recognize is that this is a play acting approach that hopefully has had a contract that's been negotiated beforehand. And, you know, there's so many issues with pornography in terms of questions about how it got there, but in the very, you know, in Inter alia, that what I'm scratching is the surface where I'm saying is what you're learning about sex is not really what women necessarily want in sex. So you're being trained to activate your sexuality and to engage with young girls in sexual, you know, sexual relationship in ways that really are defined by pornography rather than discovering your own sexuality through partnership and you know, like and and communication. So the amount, the increase of young girls being having someone think that strangling is a commonplace thing within a sexual relationship is quite alarming. I mean, so often when someone's strangled and they can't actually talk anymore, they can't even say no stop. So I don't, you know, you don't want this sort of behaviour in the hands of young men who don't really know what they're doing in any case, if you want it at all. But if it is, it's something that's negotiated in a very intimate relationship. So young boys are thinking that all of these behaviours that they see in pornography are something that's they expect of the young girls that they date now. And they're not having conversations with their dads or their big brothers or even godfathers or sports coaches, they don't have confidence to actually ask, is this normal? Is this something I should consider? They're just competing with each other in their peer group, and the sort of loudest, kind of more dramatic ones are the ones that get the attention and the sort of popularity of some sort. So it's a whole different pecking order. And I just think that it's time that men really step up, and it's not enough to say I support women, you've actually got to play a really strong role in educating the boys that are in your life by having those difficult conversations that women have all the time. And you're absolutely right. Yeah, and I just think that, you know, like the what was great about the play is that after people saw it, they often came out and I would see men that I knew or men that I didn't know come up to me and say, I'm going home to walk my son around the block and have a really difficult conversation. Because there's so much at risk, and it's it's first of all, it's the girls that they're interacting with who are likely to be sexually harassed, like or sexually assaulted or raped. Um, but secondly, is even for young boys, is this what we want them to think is their life, that this is their intimate relationship life, that they don't get to actually be open and honest and authentic in who they are, that they can't talk about their desires in a way that has a language around it. So I feel like we're hijacking so much about young lives in actually allowing this to just be how what defines sexuality for all of the young people. And also, if I think about, you know, just being the mother of a boy, you know that your boys are so open and honest with you to a certain point, and then they start getting different messages to what you've taught them, and they're not sure which way to go, with your peers or with your mother. Of course, they're going to choose their peers and they shut down that conversation with their with their mothers, and that's part of adolescence. But you have to know someone else is stepping in to counter some of the more extreme versions of what they're hearing about women, so that they don't have the shame of misogyny themselves. Because I know that a lot of young boys I spoke to said they're often in that room when you know so many things are bandied around as a kind of banterish joke and they feel embarrassed because they know it's wrong. But if they don't laugh along, then they're they have the you know, the sort of cancelling of them as part of the group. So the only other people that have been in that that scenario is really their fathers or their or or men in their lives. So they need to have some clever kind of responses to get out of that, or they need to be able to challenge that and know someone else will have their back. But they also just need to be able to debrief about what that scenario and that atmosphere is, and we don't have the basis for them to do that.

Fathers Modelling Vulnerability

SPEAKER_01 11:27

It is so much about status and the social pyramid. Yeah. I can agree more. And you've spotlighted this issue really well, uh, talking about Michael's character. I thought that scene where he kind of implodes, you know, realizing that he may be, you know, one of the perpetrators of these um collapse and his past. Yeah, I thought that scene was just really, really powerful.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

And you know, it's so interesting to me because the men, when they the silence when everyone sees his collapse, I mean, we see also see her collapse, but we're so used to, you know, women sort of crying out about the damage this is doing that when we see a man cry out about it, I mean, it's so unusual for us that we really lean into it. But it actually makes total sense once you see it. You think, yeah, like now your son is in trouble because you didn't take that walk around the block and start to interrogate what other messages he was hearing. But also, what sort of subliminal messages are we giving boys when their fathers are always talking to them about their successes and not their heartbreaks or their vulnerabilities? They're not saying, you know, like I also got rejected by a few girls before I found someone that really accepted me. And it's not about me, it's about just relationships, and that's normal. So, you know, I think often parents and maybe mothers as well, we talk about our success stories. We don't actually disclose to our children the most vulnerable times of our life, or the times that we did feel like we weren't enough, or that we were rejected, or we felt like we were unattractive or whatever. And so our kids just see their parents as having got through it all fairly successfully in most circumstances, and as a consequence, they think that they're the ones that have got a problem. They don't have any outlet to talk about it. So I feel like we're not being authentic with our children by not talking about the things that we really stumbled around about. You know, I look at Michael in the in the in the show and think, you know, he's very successful in his job. But did he ever sit down with his son and say, you know, maybe I wanted to be a musician, but I wasn't good enough? You know, like there was, you know, they both love to play music, but he sort of is happy to have himself kind of as the the successful man in the house and doesn't and feels challenged whenever anyone suggests that, you know, it's not just about that, it's about other things too. So I I mean, for me, what I loved most about the play where the audience is coming out and going, I never thought of it like that before. I never thought that it was a male responsibility to actually start to really engage in a, you know, in a way that makes you vulnerable with young men so that they actually can disclose things that they feel nervous about as well.

Audience Reactions And Male Anxiety

SPEAKER_01 14:06

And you've actually beat me to my next couple of questions. The first one being have there been any unexpected reactions from the audience or viewers?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, I mean, I think my most unexpected is, and this is unexpected because I think when you write a play, you're aware, if you're running from a very feminist perspective, that you often men often feel uncomfortable or blamed. And I think what was unexpected for me was the amount of men that came up to me and suddenly saw that they had maybe not done enough in terms of raising their own sons and their and the young boys that they'd let out into the world. But I think they all secretly have the same anxiety that Michael has, which is I don't want to talk about this stuff in case I get called out for something that I'm not aware maybe in the past I've done. And I think that anxiety is a very real anxiety for men of a certain age because there was a different set of social expectations at the time, and there was this myth that women say no and have to be won over. And yet, you know, what women that say yes straight away are s were seen to be sluts or loose women, and they weren't the ones that you were necessarily going for. And there was a kind, and as he says to his wife, there was a dance and we all played it. Like there was a there was, you know, like you also were sort of reluctant until I won you over originally to be my partner. That was the game that we all played and we were expected to play. And you know, so we all did play something like that, a bit hard to get, so that there was a bit more desire on behalf of the partner. But some of those games don't necessarily move into your sex life, and I think that you know it's a really complicated area. And I think the play tries to sort of show, not tell, what some of the issues are and and the little things that we can do to protect the next generation from exactly what happened before.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Mm-hmm. That's amazing. And I think that as we go get older, like not much kind of changes our perception of things, and like we're kind of more rigid in in what we think and and we don't interrogate our choices anymore. So the fact that this play got through um to some older men is really impressive.

Storytelling As A Tool For Change

SPEAKER_00 16:18

You know, I think because I was eager to understand the why we're allowing our boys to sort of be buried under the weight of this, I don't know, this understanding of sexuality and to be defensive about women calling them out on things. And I thought, where does it all come from? Why are men so defensive about feminism? It actually is about releasing them from some awful stereotypes as well, like and and also releasing them from this ultimate provider mentality that their lives are about keeping having a family and providing for every single member of that family and going out to work constantly. But the other thing is it sets them free to be vulnerable and relationship-based human beings. And I don't think any power is worth it if you can't have authentic relationships. So whatever they're trading to get that power might not be worth it. And I think that if they actually could see it from the uh from another perspective, they would not want that for their sons either. And they would think, how can I help my son be someone that has good relationships in a life that's valuable and authentic?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you touched on this next part as well. Um, I wanted to ask, you were a criminal defense and human rights lawyer before transitioning into playwriting, highlighting important social issues. Um, how do you use playwriting as a tool for change?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Do you know? I realized while I was a lawyer and when I was in court, I was in court every day. And more often than not, I would be doing a sentence matter for someone who had had a really awful childhood and had been found guilty of a stealing offence or something more serious often. And there would be a real risk of going to prison. And so I would I would take their story and explain their story to the judge in a way of showing that there's a time where the state has to have empathy for someone that has never had any intervention other than the criminal justice system, and that there has to be a time where we think, wow, how did we let that child suffer that long in a household without the state intervening? And I think that what I then put would put to the court is, you know, this is a young person, this is his name, this is his story. And we actually haven't, we have, we haven't, in my view, we have an obligation as as part of the state to actually say it's not just a straight to jail, that's the end of your life story, we have to see what else is possible. And I think that in telling those stories, I often had very different results to other lawyers. And I just started to realize the significance of storytelling and how if you tell a story, even to the hardest judge in the world that create that actually forces them to have empathy for someone because they can actually feel what they went through to some extent, then that judge was like hushy in my hands in terms of what I wanted next. And I thought, you know, like this tool of storytelling, maybe I could use it in a different way. And I feel like I don't have the answers. All I have is the story to tell you. That's often one that I've made up, but it's often built around something that's very true or that's a value or an issue that's significant to me and to others. And I feel like in telling the story and trusting that the audience will find a way into that story that will shift the way they think about things is, you know, one of the most wonderful things that you can feel that you're doing in the world because storytelling is as old as human beings. We've told stories since we had language. And I think sitting around a fire telling a story, the whole idea of it was not just to entertain, but to shift things in human in human form, like to actually change the way someone thinks about something or the way they feel about another person. And we often do it without even thinking. We tell narratives all day long and we tell stories about other people's lives in a with a certain scope. And I think theatre does that beautifully. But the other thing is that we've learnt this through COVID, is that now we sit, you know, in theatre we sit shoulder to shoulder with complete and utter strangers, and we breathe in the same emotional mist at the same time that it's happening live right in front of us. And there's something about that that is so completely unique. And you know, when Netflix was first on the scene, there was a lot of talk about theatre not being significantly important anymore because it's easier to stay at home with the heating on and a pause button to be able to make yourself a cup of tea. But the reality is when we went through COVID, we all realized the significance of assembling as human beings, is being in the same place together, that there was something fundamental about that that allowed us to be community and allowed us to affect change in ways that doesn't happen when you're just at home in your living room with the people that you live with. And to me, that's exactly what theatre does on you know all around the world every night or every day. And I will always be committed to that nature of community, that people come together and assemble, are prepared to experience something live, and are ex and you know, they're open to feeling something if it moves them and sharing it with the people around them, like crying together, clapping together, standing up to leave and turning to the person who was next to you, asking them what they thought. And to me, that is the beginning of shifting, like of shifting things at a really grassroots community level.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Yeah, I really related to what you said, because I'm a screenwriter as well. Um, and I I hide, we we all hide messages in our work. Um I think it's really important.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah, I think that what happens is sometimes and I don't I mean, also with screenwriting, because I screenwrite as well, but there's something about theater where you start with an idea and then you dress that idea up in a story, and the audience experience the story and it's and if the story affects them enough, they also then come face to face with the idea that sparked the story.

A Future Play About Juries

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yeah. So you've suggested that Inter alia. You call it Inter alia.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

You know what? I do call it Inter alia, but some people call it Inter alia. And it's very hard to know. I never ever have a title for a show that ever makes sense to anyone.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

No one can ever you suggested that Inter alia maybe the second in a loose trilogy with two different perspectives related to law, gender and ethics. Can you tell us anything about the third play? Is it from the accused perspective?

Taking The Work To China

SPEAKER_00 22:35

No, it's not actually I it's leaning into the jury as representative of all of us and how we bring our own stories to the table when we experience something or when we are asked to understand someone else's story. And I feel like I'd really want to interrogate what the jury brings because the juries are the ultimate decision maker and we don't even recognize the sort of social myths that we have entrenched in our own kind of psyche when we come to the table to talk about things that connect to gender and to gendered violence. Yeah yeah absolutely um you were in China recently is that is well I was yeah to do um some press tours yeah I was yeah that was with Inter Alia the um NT Live because they've actually filmed the play and it's gone out to on NT Live which is in cinemas you know the interesting thing is in China both Primaface and Interelia have both been absolutely embraced by that culture which is fascinating to me on so many levels and I think going to China and meeting my audience there was actually really special for me. You know just all the people that came out to see the NT Live version of Interelia or to stay for the question and answers. I mean I'm talking so many people and they all had really strong views and lots of questions and you know other sort of interrogations that they were interested in but just generally it was kind it was an amazing and culturally specific experience because I'd never been to China before and you know it's always good to be the outsider somewhere to see things through a different lens. And in China I was so well looked after I have to say that everyone was so good to me. But you know I still didn't speak the language or the food was different for me you know like different ways of being and so that you know really gives me an a new perspective on life as well to be honest.

Closing Thoughts And Farewell

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Well you definitely deserve the applause um and I will be seeing a third play when it comes out well it's not but not for a while yet but thank you thanks so much for speaking with me Susie I really enjoyed our conversation thanks for listening to Rebel Justice. Remember justice isn't passive it's something we build challenge and fight for every day. If today's conversation resonated with you keep it going. We'll be back soon with more voices and more stories