At first sight

Tessa Ensler is a tough-as-nails criminal defence lawyer. She has achieved what very few would have thought her capable of: rising from a background without privilege to an elite university and then to a top law firm. Her speciality is defending clients in sexual assault cases. Is her acquittal rate so high because she is a woman, as her detractors claim? Or because she is so adept at spotting gaps and contradictions in the statements of female victims? Yet her convictions are shaken when she herself is raped. When she reports the crime, she realises that the prima facie evidence does not favour her – but for her, it is not just about personal justice, but also about settling scores with a male-dominated justice system she has believed in all her life.

The Australian playwright Suzie Miller worked for many years as a criminal defence lawyer herself – specifically in the human rights sector. Her play PRIMA FACIE was awarded the Olivier Award, the highest honour in British theatre, in 2020. In this furious monodrama, Anna Grisebach gives an intense performance as Tessa, who recounts her life story piece by piece and plays all the characters who appear. Due to popular demand, we are reintroducing this Kurtheater in-house production into our programme.

○ “At the Kurtheater Baden, Grisebach shines particularly in the second half of the play as a disillusioned lawyer who has lost her faith in the law, but not in justice.” Aargauer Zeitung

Following the performance, we invite you to a post-performance discussion with the actress Anna Grisebach.