By Shari Narine Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Cliff Cardinal’s clever and powerful play William Shakespeare’s As You Like it, A Radical Retelling has taken the top prize in the drama category for the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Awards. What makes Cardinal’s work clever is that his drama has absolutely nothing to do with Shakespeare’s pastoral play. Instead, it is a “ruse,” as Cardinal calls it. The “radical retelling” is the author monologuing how much “I f?ing hate land acknowledgements. I find them so goddamn patronizing? I’ve often wondered what these land acknowledgements accomplish, aside from making white people feel good about themselves.” During the pandemic, Cardinal was approached by artistic director Chris Abraham of Crow’s Theatre in Toronto about tackling land acknowledgements in a creative way. Part of that creative…
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