Angus Cerini On 'The Bleeding Tree': "Maybe All Art Has To Do Is Bear Witness"

Some writers find it excruciating when asked to describe their work, and some are so good at it they should take up a side career in publicity. Describing The Bleeding Tree, playwright Angus Cerini falls comfortably into the latter category. "Once upon a time there was a bad dude, and it got to the point where finally the wife and kids had to defend themselves, and they killed him. And then they tried to get rid of the body, and they were discovered. But then the person who discovers them helps them. And then another person helps them, and another person helps them. Then they get away with it, and the bad man's gone, and these three women have the future in front of them. Whereas before they didn't. The end." Even the shifts from past to present tense seem profound in this context.

Cerini is not a man to shy away from the big idea, so when longtime friend and collaborator Susie Dee approached and asked him to "throw a few words at us" for a piece she was working on around the theme of "the scars that women carry", he went for the jugular. "I wanted to start big, so I decided that this mother and her daughters had killed someone." In deciding who they should kill, Cerini focused on society's most detested figure: the bully, "that violent, vile man who beats on people smaller than him".

Given that Cerini started work on what would become The Bleeding Tree back in 2014, which finally gets its Melbourne premiere at the Arts Centre's Fairfax Studio on 15 May, it's remarkable that the themes that drive the play have only become more relevant and pressing over time. Domestic violence has become a national concern in ways that must have looked unthinkable only a few years ago, but then Cerini has always had an interest in it as a subject for drama. "My very first play was called Recidivist and dealt with that issue, and that was 20 years ago. Of course, we'll still have domestic violence in 20 years time, but maybe the way we think of it as a community will have changed."

While most recent plays that deal with violence against women seem grossly inadequate in the shadow left by the white heat of the #MeToo movement  - even an excellent play like Ayad Akhtar's Disgraced feels uncomfortably apologetic now - Cerini's work taps into the zeitgeist in more satisfying ways. For a start, the character of the abuser is already dead when the play opens, so we don't have to endure any self-pitying justifications.

Cerini's work often has a scattergun approach to style and this play is typical to form. Paula Arundell, who originated the role of the mother and returns to recreate it in Melbourne, talks to rats at one point. While it's ostensibly set in the Mallee, Cerini stresses, "It's not real. It's not like a gritty hack-up-a-body crime drama; it's more of a dark fable." Cerini points to the story of Hansel and Gretel as a precedent, and it certainly seems like he's taken a Bruno Bettelheim approach to the material - using mythology as a foundation from which to create psychological roadmaps for living. It also draws on the tradition of the murder ballad: "those songs that tell a story and feel familiar for some reason."

There's more than a little hint of the revenge fantasy in there, too, although Cerini is careful to distance his work from the kind of revisionist violence that drives Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, for example. "In The Bleeding Tree, we start after the violence. I'm not that interested in violence. I'm interested in the ways in which the whole community comes to help." It's this focus on the future, on some kind of shared responsibility for the safety of our fellow citizens, that gives the play its almost-celebratory tone, its "mood of empowerment".

Since the work's genesis, the notion that a playwright shouldn't 'appropriate' the voice of a person outside their gender, class, race or sexuality has become something of a weapon in the new culture wars, a concept that Cerini finds hard to fathom. "If that were the case, I could only write about white, middle-class straight men." The question of what exonerates The Bleeding Tree from accusations of cultural appropriation seems particularly pertinent. "When it's done without respect, acknowledgment or consideration, when it's done cheaply [then it deserves to fail]."

But this play has certainly not been a failure, both commercially and critically. The Bleeding Tree has had an extraordinary run of success, winning the Griffin Prize before its premiere in 2015 under the acclaimed direction of Lee Lewis, and going on to take three Helpmann Awards. Lewis is back to direct after a successful 2017 STC season, which is a testament to the play's grit as much as to its relevance. Cerini isn't sure why it's held its place throughout the tumultuous paradigm shifts in gender representation, other than the fact that "it comes from a true place. Maybe all art has to do is bear witness."

The Bleeding Tree plays from 15 May at Arts Centre Melbourne