At NIDA’s 2024 Graduation event, Honorary Master of Fine Art recipient and award-winning playwright Suzie Miller gave a beautifully inspirational speech to the graduating cohort upon receiving her award. Suzie has kindly permitted NIDA to share the speech so all students, faculty and friends may also experience her heartfelt and encouraging words.
SUZIE MILLER: NIDA Graduates gathered here today: You have spent the years up until now working towards this day, and I congratulate you all and offer some thoughts.
I want you to deeply know that your time at NIDA, without you necessarily being aware of it, has profoundly changed you and provided you with world class skills that will be with you for all time.
The toolbox you now take into the world is a uniquely special artistic one that will not only enrich you all going forward, it will also enrich audiences and those who experience your talent. This can amount to a great many people, and therefore a great deal of influence.
The creative industries you will be engaged with are one of the few industries that have been around for all time. You are about to join such an industry, as a professional, as an Australian graduate, as someone that the National Institute of Dramatic Art here in Sydney has placed great belief in. Wherever you work in the world, wherever your work is seen in the world, whatever. heights you rise to, you bring your own unique set of skills, talents and perspectives with you. It is your instrument of engagement.
And so, I want to impress upon you that with such an instrument, with such influence also comes great responsibilities:
You have a responsibility to nurture and protect your talent, your creative flame. To stand up for it, to keep it strong, and to not be compromised in what you know to be true for you.
In order to do that, you leave today with a unique point of difference that is your own truth about the world. If art is about anything it is about that truth. What defines you? What values do you bring with you? What is unique about you, what made you, where do you come from, what has your cultural experience has been? And most importantly what is your voice?
Your voice is that inner self which tells you what your truth is, what you agree with and what you disagree with. It is what embarrasses you, keeps you vulnerable, what you kept to yourself as a teenager, what you had to navigate to become yourself. It is also the source of your talent and the narrative that has brought you to this moment. It is what NIDA saw in you on that first day you when you auditioned or interviewed to be here, it is what your teachers have been sparked, by it is what the globe NEEDS to hear from you. It is what at least one unknown person in an audience will be electrified and changed by knowing.
In a world where fame, glamour and money are often attached to the creative industries, I implore you to know that your voice, your talent is so much more than such things. There will be times where you are rejected, not chosen, where you miss out and where you will feel that the life of an artist is a terrible, gruelling and challenging thing. In those days particularly, I ask you to fan the very flame that you feel today, your passion for wanting to tell stories, create characters, design worlds. Lean into community, remind yourself what is valuable to you, and why. Fortify yourself and your voice by art itself. Find mentors, keep in touch with your alumni and teachers, remind yourself that as a member of an arts community there is great generosity that you can lean into, and that you must reach out with. You have been taught this generosity of ideas and collaboration at a worldclass instructions that values both.
And tomorrow you leave to become the world’s storytellers. This is a remarkable responsibility. You bring your own lived experience and uniquely combine it with the art and voice of other artists to offer reflections, insights, emotional landscapes, joy and hope to everyone who sees your work. What other job in the world asks you to do that? It is a privilege and more than just a career, -it is a life lived boldly. You are also part of something that humans have done for time immemorial. In a world where stories keep us connected and hopeful, where we derive so much of our sense of self, you are key.
Each of you in this room now has the skills to create and interpret language in a manner that sheds light on the human experience; you might not even realise this while you are doing it.
I worked as a lawyer while I studied here at NIDA to become a playwright.
The stories I came across in the law while working in human rights showed me the despair of humankind. I worked with the homeless, the tortured, the destroyed, the survivors of violence, those discriminated against, and the victims of drugs and alcohol. Most of my clients were under 25 years of age. I was confronted and often struck that beneath their legal stories were stories of great fear and sadness, loneliness and generational trauma.
The challenge for all artists is how to communicate a story to the world; what words, images or voices are to be used.
And storytelling requires storytellers of all types, be they writers, actors, directors, designers, producers, to be vulnerable. They must use their imagination to create empathy with the characters at the core of any narrative, and to be imaginative and empathetic are both acts of bravery. We must first listen to the voices about us, those that are not familiar, even those we disagree with. Then we must interpret those voices through our own unique lens into a story that can be heard or understood by others. We must be authentic, so that the story will resonate and bring our own experiences to our craft.
We will disagree, we will argue, we will have different stories, but each of those are also a portal to argue the opposite. To interrogate what is just, what is sacred to us and what matters.
In my career as a writer of theatre, novels, and screen, I am also distinctly aware of the power of art and creative industry. Every story is an expression, a portal into another way of being. And when you tell stories about injustice to an audience you never know who is listening, who can be affected then go forth and make changes – to change even the law itself. This was my experience with my play Prima Facie.
A small one-person play, interrogating a fictional woman’s experience of a sexual assault as it played out in the court system, made its way to the worlds’ stages and was seen by 100,000s of people including judges, barristers and law makers all over the world.
This play, Prima Facie, was not an unusual story, but it was told in a way that allowed people to feel the dissonance between a woman’s experience and the law itself. To my astonishment and now utter joy, the powerful people who saw this play– judges, politicians, police inspectors and so many more – were so affected that they took it upon themselves to change the law, to increase awareness and to make a significant difference all over the world. On that wave of change so too did police forces of various countries decide to open discussions around the play, with thousands of officers viewing a film (NT Live) of the performance and engaging in formal discussions about how they could make a difference in the reporting and recording of sexual assaults. Barristers are drafting new legislation to offer to the senate, and the play continues to make a difference in all the 50 countries it is playing in. I was invited to talk to the United Nations in New York about the issues it raises and have received so many messages from individuals who felt it changed their lives. Art has power, and I am profoundly humbled by this experience.
Prima Facie began here in Australia, then opened on the West End in London, it transferred to Broadway and is now in over 50 countries with more than one production in most countries and translated into more languages than I knew existed. The play has won so many awards, and the actors who have played the role in these countries have also won awards in their own countries and beyond.
But most of all the story touched people. People can be profoundly moved and inspired by simple but truthful storytelling. Storytelling can lead to justice making.
In this room, everyone is a storyteller, you have all been gifted with talent and bestowed with an understanding of communication through your studies here at NIDA. So go forth with your talent, your grit, your enthusiasm and your truth. You are the world’s storytellers.
Be brave. Be bold. Speak up. Listen actively. Interrogate intelligently, and hear the stories of your fellow humans.
Explore what is all about us, lean into what you are passionate about, tell those about you how much you love them. Live a big story yourselves in this one small life we have on this planet. My play was just one person on stage, a play that I wrote on impulse in a dark room while everyone else was out partying, that work began on a small stage at Griffin theatre in Sydney yet made such a big change in world. Your truth matters. Your storytelling matters. Your voices matter. Go fly, make art.
Go out there and make a difference!