Before stepping into the light, Lee Ja-ram repeats a single line to herself in the dark: “I am Tessa Jane Ensler. I am Tessa Jane Ensler.”
For Lee — a veteran pansori singer with more than three decades of experience, who also wears many hats as a musical performer, writer, director and actor — this moment is an unfamiliar challenge: a one-woman play.
The 46-year-old performer is hardly new to standing alone onstage. In pansori, a singer commands the space singlehandedly, accompanied only by a gosu, a drummer.
But “Prima Facie,” she admits, has tested her in new and daunting ways.
“There’s nothing to lean on,” Lee said in a recent group interview with reporters. “It’s my first time being onstage without using sori (song). I was completely alone. With pansori, I can rely on my voice — I just practice and perfect it. But here, as Tessa, I didn’t even know what to practice.”
Written in 2019 by Australian playwright and human rights lawyer Suzie Miller, “Prima Facie” is an unflinching, 120-minute monologue. It follows Tessa, a brilliant and ambitious lawyer who believes deeply in the law until one day she becomes a victim of sexual assault. The play tracks her 782-day legal battle as her faith in justice collapses.
Since its premiere, “Prima Facie” has sparked global conversations about gender and justice, sweeping major theater awards, including the 2023 Tony and Olivier Awards. In Korea, the role of Tessa is shared in rotation by Lee, Kim Shin-rok and Cha Ji-yeon.
“Every project throws a different hurdle,” Lee said. “Once you clear it, you reach the flag. This one felt like the highest hurdle yet. Because the play deals so directly with violence, I had to digest it slowly and carefully. I used my time more intensely than ever.”
Before meeting audiences, Lee said the work carried personal meaning as her first one-woman show. But once she stood onstage, she realized the work’s larger resonance.
“When I finally met the audience, I realized what it meant for this production to be staged here, in the middle of South Korea — how significant that is,” she said.
“I can’t avoid stories that hit so close to home. … I think my job is to find where my experience as a woman and as an artist meets that universal empathy. My task is to figure out what ‘well’ means in this time, as a woman and as an artist.”
Although billed as a one-woman show, Lee said the process was not so lonely.
“At first, I carried everything as a private burden. But once Kim, Cha and I began sharing our thoughts, we became each other’s anchors.”
The play’s emotional weight lingers long after the curtain call.
“After one performance, I heard someone say, ‘But you know, there are women who lie,’” she recalled. “And I thought, that’s exactly why we need this play. The stage shows only a flicker of hope and then hands the baton to the audience, inviting them to continue the conversation.”
“Prima Facie” runs through Nov. 2 at Chungmu Arts Center in Seoul.
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