![]() “We did the ritual of going out, turning around three times and being asked to be let back in. Cardinal recalls how a doubter boldly uttered the name during a cast party inside a theatre - and a huge speaker immediately crashed onto the dance floor. Folklore around the Scottish play says that if Macbeth’s name is spoken aloud inside a theatre, bad luck will follow. It did not do any harm that he was charming, well-built and a dashing young man with a marvelous sense of humour.” Scottish curseĪmong Cardinal’s Shakespearian credits is a close call with Macbeth’s ghost. “He worked like a fiend and produced, and he did so with generosity, commitment, humility and responsibility to his work and classmates. Jean-Pierre Fournier, ’73 BFA, ’98 MFA, a U of A stage combat instructor, remembers Cardinal well. “I was close to the action but I didn’t have to go out there and speak.” BFA beginnings Stage frightĬardinal joined the backstage crew in high school rather than audition for a part. Just for laughsĪ shy youngster, Cardinal became the class clown, stealing jokes from comedy records to make friends and fit in. More about Lorne Cardinal, a recipient of a 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award. “And then we’d get up and we’d go back to work.” “We would stop and we’d sit and we’d smudge and we’d pray and we’d talk about it,” Cardinal recalls. Newly graduated, Cardinal was one of 23 Indigenous actors hailing from 23 different nations rehearsals were marked by periods of raw emotion as scenes replayed the true stories of many of the actors’ ancestors. Instead, he cherishes opportunities like his 1993 role in Black Elk Speaks, a historical retelling of the near-extinction of American Indians. “If it’s a stereotype of a Native person, if it doesn’t drive the scene, if the character doesn’t have an important role in the story it’s telling, I’m not interested,” he says. Today, Cardinal has drawn a firm line against roles that are blatant attempts to add brown faces to the scenery. “But knew that if we were gonna live in this system, we had to learn how that system works.” Acting while Indigenous “It led to a lot of fights and racist experiences at a young age,” Cardinal says. His dad, a residential school survivor who raised Cardinal and his brother, sent the boys to schools where they were the only brown kids. His earliest memories involve nuns at the day school in Fort Vermilion, Alta., who tied his thumb to a belt loop to stop him from writing with his left hand. It was the best tool box I could ever ask for.”Ĭardinal’s relationship with formal education wasn’t always so positive. “I don’t think I’d be doing half the stuff if it wasn’t for the BFA training. ![]() And then I pore over every description, everything the writer says, everything the characters say,” Cardinal says. “I start with the script and I start reading, working my way through it. His theatre performances have included an all-Indigenous production of King Lear at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre and the Edmonton staging of The Tempest performed by a mix of deaf and hearing actors. In addition to his portrayal of the loveable Davis Quinton on Corner Gas, he (or his voice) have been in the TV series Molly of Denali and FBI: Most Wanted. His authenticity is a big part in his success in more than 100 stage and screen roles over the last four decades. … You have to learn how to walk first.’”įour years later, as the program’s first Indigenous graduate, Cardinal had developed those skills along with a special talent for finding the truth in the roles he plays. We don’t do that kind of theatre,’” he recalls. “And when I got there it was like, ‘Nope. The Cree actor from the Sucker Creek First Nation in Alberta had been on stage often enough at that point to know he had found his calling - but not enough to know what he didn’t know.Īt the time, he was rehearsing for “his first paid gig,” a play by poet, writer and eventual filmmaker Alison McAlpine that involved lots of “clown work and mask work and body work.” He assumed a bachelor of fine arts would give him more exposure to avant-garde performance styles. To hear Lorne Cardinal, ’93 BFA, tell it, he didn’t know how to walk, talk, read or even breathe like an actor before he started the U of A’s fine arts program. ![]()
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