ANGUS CERINI WINS 2014 GRIFFIN AWARD
Melbourne playwright Angus Cerini has been awarded the 2014 Griffin Award for his new work The Bleeding Tree.
Griffin Theatre Company announced the award at the SBW Stables Theatre on Wednesday June 25.
The Griffin Award is a national playwriting prize provided by Australia’s leading new writing theatre company. In its seventeenth year, the Award recognises an outstanding play or performance text that displays an authentic, inventive and contemporary Australian voice.
Cerini was awarded $10,000, while all shortlisted plays received a $1,000 cash prize, supported by Copyright Agency Limited. The prize was announced after actors read excerpts of work by five shortlisted plays written by Mary Anne Butler, Angus Cerini, Glyn Roberts, Diane Stubbings and Vivienne Walshe.
There were 124 entries in this year’s Griffin Award. The 2014 judges include The Australian theatre critic John McCallum, writer and producer Annette Shun Wah, Griffin Artistic Director Lee Lewis, writer Louise Fox and Griffin Associate Artist Ben Winspear.
The Bleeding Tree is a play that ventures into the Gothic world of horror-comedy. Cerini creates the story of a mother and two daughters living in a remote and violent landscape which is at once the buried past and the apocalyptic future of Australia. The play starts with a murder and from there goes on a moral slippery-dip into the comic world of corporeal decomposition.
Griffin Artistic Director Lee Lewis says that, “The Bleeding Tree is strong, brave, funny writing with political punch. It faces up to the Australian heritage of violence towards women and asks us to acknowledge our part in it. Angus Cerini is as irreverent as he is committed. His poetic style is Edward Lear meets Dexter meets Lewis Carrol at a BP service station. He has invented three characters who I can’t wait to see standing on stage, and lines just begging to be voiced. It is funny, it is awful and it is the winner of the Griffin Award.”
Past winners of The Griffin Award include Lachlan Philpott for Silent Disco (2009), Debra Oswald for Mr Bailey’s Minder (2004), Brendan Cowell for Rabbit (2003), Rick Viede for A Hoax (2011), and Vivienne Walshe for This is Where We Live (2012).Jump for Jordanby Donna Abela won last year’s award and was performed as part of Griffin’s 2014 Main Season, before touring to Wollongong as part of Merrigong Theatre Company’s 2014 program.
At a time when there is much debate about the strength of Australian playwriting, the Griffin Award is proving to be a distinguished pathway for diverse and relevant new Australian work to have successful main stage productions.
Angus Ceriniis a writer, performer and director from Melbourne with a background in dance. His productions have toured throughout Australia and internationally and have received numerous awards and recognition. They include solo works Filch, Saving Henry, Chapters from the Pandemic and Detest (this thousand years I shall not weep) which received multiple awards and recognition in Germany and Ireland. His play Wretch won the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, was nominated for numerous Green Room Awards and toured throughout Victoria and to the Brisbane Arts Festival. His most recent production of Save for Crying was awarded a RE ROSS Trust Award and received Green Room Awards for Best New Writing and Best Independent Production. Cerini has developed work with Sydney Theatre Company and had work produced by Playbox Theatre Company and Melbourne Workers Theatre. For young audiences he has produced work with Arena Theatre Company and Platform Youth Theatre. His work has been supported through Playwriting Australia including presentations at the National Play Festival and he is currently undertaking a range of projects with companies including Malthouse Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company.
Photographer: Vikk Shayen