The son of actress Tantoo Cardinal, he was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and grew up in Toronto and Los Angeles as his mother pursued her career in both Canada and the United States.[2] He had early acting roles in productions such as Michael Hollingsworth's The Saskatchewan Rebellion[3] and Kenneth Williams's Three Little Birds, and made his debut as a playwright with Stitch at the 2009 Rubaboo Performance Gala in Edmonton.[4]
Theatre career
In 2011, Stitch was staged at the SummerWorks Theatre Festival,[5] where Cardinal won the Theatre Passe Muraille Emerging Artist Award, and Cara Gee won Best Actress for her performance in the lead role.[6]
After Huff and Stitch were published together in book form, Cardinal was a nominee in the Alternative Format category at the 2018 Indigenous Voices Awards.[9]
In 2019 his play Too Good to Be True, inspired in part by his relationship with his mother, premiered at Toronto's VideoCabaret theatre.[10] It was the first play ever staged by the company in its new Busy St. theatre, and one of the first times the company staged a play by anybody but Hollingsworth and Deanne Taylor.[10] In 2019 and early 2020, he toured the variety show Cliff Cardinal's CBC Special, in which he performed a mixture of short acting monologues, storytelling and music.[11]
The Land Acknowledgement
In 2021, Cardinal debuted Shakespeare's As You Like It: A Radical Retelling at the Crow's Theatre in Toronto.[12] Advertised as an indigenous-themed adaptation of William Shakespeare's As You Like It, the play actually featured no Shakespearean content at all, and instead consisted entirely of Cardinal performing a monologue on Indigenous Canadian political issues through the framework of a satirical land acknowledgement nominally preceding the Shakespeare play that wasn't really being performed.[12] Cardinal later explained that the bait and switch tactic was chosen because he wanted to avoid "preaching to the converted", and instead wanted the monologue to hit harder by virtue of being unexpected and surprising.[2] To that end, he also concluded each show by asking the audience not to reveal the trick to people who had not yet seen the show.[12]
The play received a new production by Mirvish Productions at the CAA Theatre in 2023, although it was retitled The Land Acknowledgement, or As You Like It as Mirvish did not permit Cardinal to use the "bait and switch" marketing tactic.[18]
↑ Liz Nicholls, "A multi-course meal in one pot; Theatre, spoken word and music share flavours in aboriginal variety show". Edmonton Journal, June 11, 2009.
↑ Robert Crew, "Cash well spent on family tales". Toronto Star, August 8, 2011.
↑ "SummerWorks hands out hardware". Toronto Star, August 8, 2011.
↑ Carly Maga, "Doras distribute the wealth among T.O.'s best: Canadian Opera big winner - with Siegfried taking five, La Traviata winning three". Toronto Star, June 28, 2016.
↑ "Five shows to see at the push international performing arts festival". Vancouver Sun, January 15, 2022.
↑ Liane Faulder, "A radical retelling; The Roxy launches with As You Like It adaptation shrouded in mystery". Edmonton Journal, April 23, 2022.
↑ Alex Schummer, "This is a new kind of Shakespeare: Cliff Cardinal's 'As You Like It' will be staged at Showplace Peterborough Sept. 22 and 23". Peterborough Examiner, September 13, 2022.
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