You know what goes so much further than a land acknowledgment? A donation to a local healing lodge or Native community centre. Part standup, part dramatic monologue, “The Land Acknowledgement” pokes fun at white Canadians who offer trite acknowledgments instead of using their resources and platforms to make meaningful change. The script’s tightened up a bit since 2021 but still spans a wide range of topics, emotions and theatrical styles. Lying to the Mirvish subscriber base about the show’s contents wasn’t in the cards.Īnd so “The Land Acknowledgement, or As You Like It,” was born. And on a Mirvish stage, no less, with more than a few jabs at David Mirvish (as well as Canadian theatre more broadly).īut perhaps the most damning of his jokes, at the expense of Toronto’s most powerful theatre company: according to Cardinal, Mirvish made him and his “co-conspirator,” Crow’s Theatre artistic director Chris Abraham, change the title of the show. Well, Cardinal’s “As You Like It” is back in Toronto. And for the most part, audiences and reviewers obliged. The show sent shock waves through the Toronto theatre community and was close to unreviewable: his parting ask at each performance was that the secret of his “As You Like It” be kept to preserve the shock value of the experience for future audiences. Trick title or not, it was a superb piece of theatre, a conversation between artist and audience, and a testament to the power of marketing when making a show. Or, more to the point, a monologue about why Cardinal, born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, hates land acknowledgments, with suggestions for the things we really should be acknowledging: the water wars of the not-so-distant future, the unmarked graves of thousands of Indigenous children, the thousands of years of generational trauma embedded within us all.Ĭardinal’s performance balanced hot anger with surprising levity, and covered a wide gamut of anecdotes and statistics with gusto. Instead they got a 90-minute land acknowledgment.
Cardinal land full#
And anyone familiar with Cardinal’s previous works - searing yet funny solo shows like “Huff,” about solvent abuse and suicide - likely knew this “As You Like It” would be one for the ages.Īudiences attended in full force, expecting some form of Shakespeare. The cast was a well-kept secret, and would be announced at every performance. The advertising for the show was cryptic and a little impish: by all accounts, this would be an “As You Like It” unlike any audiences had seen before.
When Cliff Cardinal’s radical retelling of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” premiered at Crow’s Theatre in 2021, all hell broke loose.
At the CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge St., until April 2.
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