Your honour, I am here in a unique position. Usually I stand at the bar, but now I am in this courtroom as a witness, a complainant, a victim. As a barrister, I have questioned women in sexual assault cases on the assumption that evidence can be delivered in a clean, logical package, and now I have seen from my own attempts here that it cannot be. In all of my professional life, I have participated in a system that has done this to women, and now I know it is not right. It is not reasonable, because now I know, from my own life, both as a woman and a lawyer, that the lived experience of sexual assault, it is not remembered in a neat, consistent, scientific parcel. And it’s because of that, the law often finds evidence “unbelievable”. So, I understand a witness can be mistaken in their evidence. I have suggested it time and time again. But this is not a car accident, or a home invasion. This is rape. It’s a crime against the person and now I know. You know, when a woman says “no”, when her actions say “no”, it is nor a subtle, unreadable thing at all. Yet before this, I too, I would suggest that she was mistaken. But when a woman has been violated, it is a corrosive wound. It is one that starts with terror and pain deep into the body. It then overtakes the mind, the soul. Yet before this, I too, I would suggest that “she was confused”. I mean, the message is, if we do not deliver our evidence neatly in a clear linear story, with consistency in recall, then we are lying. Yet before this, I would point out inconsistencies as proof of doubt. I would tell the jury they couldn’t possibly be sure. As a lawyer I know, I know, the law, it cannot jettison consistency entirely, but in sexual assault cases, can we keep using it as the litmus test of credibility? Because, as a victim, let me tell you the rape and the perpetrator, they are vividly recalled. The peripheral details, not so clearly. If a woman is rattled by having to relive the nightmare in court, if a woman’s experience of rape is not as the court likes it to be, the we conclude that she is prone to exaggeration and it’s because of this she is so often disbelieved.
So here in court, I want to call it out. The law of sexual assault, it spins on the wrong axis. A woman’s experience of sexual assault, it does not fit in the male-defined system of truth. So it cannot be truth, and therefore, there cannot be justice. The law has been shaped by generations and generations of men. There was a time, not so long ago, when courts like this did not see non-consensual sex in marriages as rape, did not see that battered women, they fight back in a manner distinct from the way that men fight. Yet once we see, I mean, we cannot unsee, can we? Now I see from my own experience that we have got it all wrong when it comes to sexual assault. We don’t interrogate the law’s own assumptions, instead we persist on interrogating the victims. The law is an organic thing. It is defined by us. It is constructed by us, in light of our experiences. All of ours, so there are no excuses any more. It must change because the truth is that one in three women are sexually assaulted and their voices, there need to be heard, they need to be believed in order for justice to be done.
Tag: National Theatre Live, Suzie Miller, Jodie Comer,
The Beaux’ Stratagem 2023.10.27
打打闹闹笑笑唱唱轻轻松松。
Tag: National Theatre Live, George Farquhar, Susannah Fielding, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Samuel Barnett, Geoffrey Streatfeild,
Jim O’Connor很正能量、有野心，愿意交朋友、给Laura建议。这样的人感觉不是一个世界的，不知道该觉得他很inspiring还是manexplaining。说那么多，结果Laura理解她的人生意义就是玻璃动物园，Jim惊呆了哑口无言。妈妈实在让人受不了，无法呼吸，但又特别可怜。感觉两个孩子都已经接受了，但是妈妈是最受不了的，她最要强、最要孩子们好。最后的结局是儿子的离开。
Tag: Tennessee Williams, Ivo van Hove, l’Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Isabelle Huppert, Justine Bachelet, Cyril Guei, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, ITA Live,
It isn’t only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.
Tag: Hanya Yanagihara, Ivo van Hove, Ramsey Nasir, ITA Live,
女主是racist？男二和女主是一样的，他的自辨是you’ve got to be carefully taught。这部戏里的女主的歧视蛮有时代特征的，她是“你不歧视，我不能和你好”，男主是“你歧视，我也和你好”，现在是“你歧视，我不能和你好”，是谁变狭隘了呢？从这个角度，我们看他们就像他们看土著，就像未来的人们看我们。
中国也有Shakespeare in the Park了，这次一连四天有两部剧在外滩旁边的这个小公园（户外草坪）上演，把前面三个字母大写SHA变成了上海的双关语。国庆假期期间天气很不错，晚上也很凉爽，在户外看戏蛮舒服的。场地是露天的，在草坪上放上了临时的座位，面对一栋建筑物和舞台。灯光会打在建筑物上（字幕也会），有点欧式的建筑再搭上装饰的灯光，还蛮有莎士比亚的氛围的。座位有一个天然的缺点，因为是临时改造的，都在平地，而且舞台也在平地，所以坐在后排视线遮挡比较严重。还有无人机低飞的时候很吵，很影响观剧体验。另外入园的时候，还有一些比较fancy的摆拍装置和拉小提琴的人，感觉有点显摆。入园的时候一人发了一个电动的荧光棒，说是会被同一遥控发光，不是很明白有什么意义，最后原来是也显示政绩大合影的时候亮。
可以看的出来这部改编非常辛苦，创作者表演者真的很努力。唱的部分感觉是把一些比较经典的唱段拿过来凑到剧情里（我知道的只有“不到园林，怎知春色如许”），其实也算合理，本来就有那种歌曲凑成一部音乐剧的，为什么不能昆曲凑剧情呢。演员一个人演所有的角色，演的也很累，中途坐下来喝矿泉水。让我比较意外的是，原来昆曲念白除了方言，还有普通话，还有英语。说了几段英文台词独白，包括to be or not to be也是用英文讲的。最搞笑的是字幕打在建筑物上，中文的时候一句一句是从上至下竖着的，英文的时候就直接倒下了，太别扭了。
虽然很用心，但是也并没有非常惊艳的感觉，主要还是因为巴赫的音乐太强了，舞蹈的编排也很难超越巴赫的音乐的复杂性和有趣性吧。相比之下，我最喜欢《Variation 17 a 2 Clav.》这一首，由三个舞者身着红黄蓝，跳跃的时候很有弹性。然后我再回去单听这一首，还是钢琴曲更好听，没有为了配合舞蹈动作的速度，钢琴曲本身可以更快，更行云流水。
tag: Heinz Spoerli, Johann Sebastian Bach, 维也纳国家芭蕾舞团,
