‘I can hear people weeping’: Heather Mitchell rises to the role of Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Award-winning actor Heather Mitchell, who stars as iconic US Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg in RBG: Of Many, One, says dramatic world events are influencing the way audiences experience the acclaimed work.
Over the past four years Heather Mitchell has stepped into the role – and robes – of Ruth Bader Ginsberg more than 300 times in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth. As Mitchell prepares to bring RBG: Of Many, One to Adelaide, the 67-year-old says she’s not tired – just energised.
The Sydney Theatre Company production, heading to the Dunstan Playhouse in April as part of State Theatre Company South Australia’s 2026 program, is a one-woman show where Mitchell portrays 33 characters from across Ginsberg’s personal life and trailblazing legal career.
Ginsberg was the second woman to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, appointed in 1993 by Bill Clinton to lead a groundbreaking career tackling gender discrimination and advocating for human rights.
This intimate 90-minute production, written by Suzie Miller and directed by Priscilla Jackman, has played to packed houses and standing ovations across Australia.
“When you’re doing a show which is talking to the audience, all you feel is the audience,” Mitchell says. “Doing a play where there’s a fourth wall, and you’re doing a beautiful three-act play, you’re still always aware of your audience, but in this sort of show, you are completely aware of your audience all the time, my relationship is solely with the audience and that’s the beauty of it, and it’s the audience that carries me through the show. So, doing the show is not tiring if I feel the audience is engaged, then they carry me.
“I feel very privileged actually to be doing this, and people are weeping. I can hear people weeping because this is striking a chord with people.”
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Michell says Ginsberg’s personal stories of loss, grief, her relationship with her mother and her one regret in life (“I won’t give it away,” she says) are all themes that resonate with audiences.
“I think a lot of it is about loss, particularly at the moment, the world is changing so very rapidly, so much of life is about having strong opinions and moving on from one thing to the next to the next,” she says.
“Ruth was a very stoic person who believed in the long game, not in the short wins, and she was plotting bit by bit by bit. And I think people find that very moving, because it’s something that belongs sometimes to the past.”
The high-profile Ginsberg was also lauded for her detailed and strategic dissenting decisions, which were were used to build cases and influence lawmakers decades later.
“So she was sort of writing letters to the future as much as working within the system,” Mitchell says. “I have to say, not being a lawyer, I’ve read many of her dissents, and they’re extraordinary. Suzie Miller, who wrote the play, describes her dissents as ‘catnip to a kitten’, in that you read them and it’s just intoxicating, her understanding and the level of argument that she would get into.
“She fought a lot for the dignity of all human beings, and she believed enormously in the rule of law, and that the law has the ability to change people’s feelings, to change people, and therefore change people’s lives and minds.”
Personally, Michell says she and RBG had much in common, including mothers who both passed away on the day of their daughter’s last school exam, and supportive husbands over many years, both called Martin (Mitchell has been married to cinematographer Martin McGrath since 1992).
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“We also both had two kids, we both had cancer a number of times, and my mother was Jewish, so we have the Jewish background,” she says. “I’m also American – I have American and Australian nationality … my father was from upstate New York, so there’s a number of things which I just felt resonated personally for me with her, so that really helps as well.”
Mitchell says that performing RBG: Of Many, One against the turbulent backdrop of modern American and global politics has also informed how audiences are experiencing Ginsberg’s story.
“Each time I’ve done this play the world has been a vastly different space,” she says. “Actually the rate that things are changing is so fast and the number of things that Ruth fought so fervently and passionately for are at risk.
“People, I think, are hearing all Ruth’s arguments about democracy, the importance of the separation of powers, that the judiciary and the executive Congress cannot sway each other, and all we’re watching is his [Trump’s] complete abuse of that.
“We haven’t changed a single word of the show but people who have seen it multiple times ask, ‘Is it the same?’, ‘Is it the same writing?’, and I say, ‘Yes, every single word is the same but they’re just hearing it differently because of what is happening in the world’.
“I feel like, the first time we did it, it was like doing just a story about Ruth’s life. The second time we did it, it was very much about this woman’s life and what she achieved. The second year we did it, Trump had been elected, and there was a lot of almost laughter in the show when Trump is mentioned. And there was sort of like, ‘Well, how can this be happening? This is ridiculous’.
“I don’t mean to be making a judgment here so much as just saying this is the response. But you know, there was no way this [Trump] was going to last so we could have some humour about it and be outraged by the things he said about women in particular … now it is like watching democracy not just wobble, but topple.”
Mitchell says the currency of Ginsberg’s story reaches beyond seasoned theatregoers. “Even if you don’t love theatre, if you are interested in why we are experiencing what we’re experiencing in the world right now, and want a different perspective of it, or a perspective of how we’ve got here, and to hear an extraordinary story about an extraordinary woman’s life and the people she’s affected, and how it’s affected the world, come along.
“It’s also very entertaining with a lot of laughs.”
When she does finally retire the role, Mitchell says it won’t be an emotional farewell: “She’ll always be with me, her words will always be with me”.
RBG: Of Many, One is playing at the Dunstan Playhouse from April 10 – May 2, presented by State Theatre Company South Australia
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