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Huff

By: Eliana Jacobs, Lucy Haché, Meggan Jacobson & Sara Salter

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Written & Performed by Cliff Cardinal

Photo source: https://ent-nts.ca/en/graduates-and-recent-cohorts/biography/2015/cardinal/cliff/

Cardinal was born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, but has spent most of life in Toronto where he currently lives. His love for acting started at a young age as result of his mother, Tantoo Cardinal, being a well-credited actress. When he was 15 years old, he took a semester off of school to focus on theatre. Cardinal performed in Freeman’s Wake by Yvette Nolan, author of Medicine Shows, which showed in the Rhubarb Festival in 2005. After this, Cardinal started taking acting classes and workshops. As mentioned in Medicine Shows, Cardinal acted in “an adapted version of Tales of an Urban Indian that toured BC secondary schools in a Green Thumb production in 2007” (Nolan, 2015, 28) where he received a Jessie Richardson Memorial Theatre Award nomination for Outstanding Performance. Cardinal only started to write after joining Native Earth’s Young Voice program where George Carlin and Richard Pryor influenced his work. His first play, Stitch, was shown at SummerWorks 2011 and won the Theatre Passe Murielle’s Emerging Artist Award. The next year, Huff was shown at Summer Works 2012 where Cardinal received the 2012 Buddies in Bad Times Vanguard Award for Risk & Innovation. The play was inspired by and based on a short story Cardinal wrote in 2005 called “Huff”. In 2013, Cardinal’s Maria Gets A New Life, debuted at Summer Works 2013.

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Directed by Karin Randoja

Photo source: http://www.nativeearth.ca/huff-randoja/

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Synopsis

Photo source: https://nowtoronto.com/stage/theatre/review-huff_1/

Synopsis: Protocol The performance started with the main character, Wind, trying to killing him. He is lying on the ground with a plastic bag taped around his head and his hands handcuffed behind him. He is talking to the audience as if he is narrating what is happening. The audience then understands that the play is going to be about how he ended up in the situation. The play only has one performer who is acting multiple people. He describes how his parents met, referring to them as “the warrior and the princess”. He then states how after having three boys, his mom committed suicide , leaving his dad to look after them. The performer acts out what life was like for Wind and his brothers, Charles and Huff, growing up on the reserve. The audience witnesses the mischief, and drugs the brothers get into, as well as the abuse they face. After accidentally burning down an abandoned motel they used as a club house, the brothers get sprayed by a raccoon. In order to get rid of the smell, they have to bath in tomato juice. The oldest brother then threatens to tell their dad that the younger brothers burned down the motel if they do not do him sexual favours and he then proceeds to sexually abuse them. It then becomes clear that the younger brothers are doing drugs and playing the “pass out game” in order to numb themselves from their reality. When the dad sees that what a mess they have made with the tomato juice, he beats the boys and Wind runs away. The youngest brother meanwhile plays the “passed out game” and ends up killing himself. The result of all those factors is why Wind tries to kill himself, but he doesn’t fall through with it. The spirit of his little brother helps him free himself.

VIDEO: http://www.cp24.com/video?clipId=805417&binId=1.1127680&playlistPageNum=1

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Reviews

Prism Magazine:

“Huff is vital theatre. It’s messy and wrenching, daring the audience to go to almost unbearable places. It begs us to see what we’d rather turn away from, making us laugh one moment and sucker punching us in the gut the next.”

-Sasha Singer-Wilson

SAD MAG

“Haunting and authentic, Huff is a truly outstanding achievement.” -Hannah Thomson

Vancouverplays

“It is unpredictable, mischievous and energetic. Huff finds joyful moments in a reality that has too often been ignored or silenced.” -Lindsay Lachance

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Witnessing

Photo source: nac-cna.ca

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Audience

Nolan’s “Audience”
Different backgrounds make for different viewing experiences
“Imaginary Friends”
Become a part of Wind’s world through sound, smell, sight.

Photo source: http://pushfestival.ca/shows/festival-2016/huff-2/

Danielle, also brought this up*

“A theatre practitioner I know in Toronto once referred to “the dark cloud of Native theatre” as a reason for why audiences stayed away. Why would a person pay to go into a theatre and be made to feel guilty? Nolan Pg. 208

“Yet the success of Where the Blood Mixes, FareWel and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing suggest that mainstream audiences were willing to look at the poison exposed if it were framed a certain way.

Nolan suggest that this is due to the ability of Producer and production team to “mediate between the audience and actor”

~Judging by the reviews and attention this play is getting I would say that it is mainstream ~

The Artistic producer was Donna Spencer, the Artistic Producer of the Firehall Arts Centre. Yet, it didn’t feel like any mediation was happening.

-Other than giving the background story of his mom and dad’s meeting and descent into alcoholism and abuse, Cardinal doesn’t situate the audience within the colonial context, it is almost presumed that we know, or too bad.

-Also It was very clear that the audience would understand the play differentely, or have a different experience depending on their background. EX: I grew up on a reserve and so I was very familiar with many of the inside jokes (the skunk, which I think was confusing to people kokum),

but I was also understood the darker elements of the play that would have seemed alien to the mainly white upper middleclass members of the audience ( huffing gas, solvent abuse, blacking out-- > use example of scene where their father’s girlfriend gives them a bottle of Lysol to make them go to bed, the older woman in front of me turned to her husband and said “what do they use Lysol for?”

Indeed I think the success of this play is largely due to Cardinal’s ability to depict a really difficult yet important story in both an unsettling yet humorous way.

~The audience is pulled into this world in a really visceral way.

-tearing of ductape, complete darkness except for vacancy sign, which changes to No Vacancy

-the splashing of tomatoes, (representing the shame these boys carry)

-the smell of the tomatoes

- the sound and lighting made you feel like you were in the trip with the boys.

“Mainstream audiences are only ready to examine poison exposed from a distance, looking in the window to First Nations communities where we act out our damage on eachother, and especially on our women.” Nolan pg. 234

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Unsettling the Settlers

implicating the audience
splashing tomatoes
uncomfortable scenes
Taboo subject matter

Photo source: https://nowtoronto.com/stage/theatre/review-huff_1/

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Indigenous worldview & Ceremony

Connection to Natural world
Nolan’s Ceremony

Trickster
Skunk as messenger
Tobacco as sacred
Sacred Gifts from Creator

Photo source: http://firehallartscentre.ca/

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Humour

Examples:

Shit Creek Radio
The skunk and the dog
The reserve school system and the teacher
Video gaming
The boys’ cute childish reactions to serious things

Photo source: https://nowtoronto.com/downloads/68753/download/1_Cliff-Cardinal---1.jpg?cb=aa6cac199cf88495b7cbce05973aaf91

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Huff as Medicine

The humour through moments of comic relief → We are still able to laugh
Kokhum’s ceremony → Huff stops Wind from committing suicide
The overall situation of the performance

Photo source: https://naccnaca-stories.s3.amazonaws.com/9227/huff_nac_stories_2__max.jpg

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Poison Exposed

Substance abuse
Incest and sexual abuse
Reserve school system and mental abuse
Inadequate parenting
Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder
Inter-familial violence
Depression (in both adults and children)
Suicide

Exposed via a nationwide tour

Photo source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CReLCDYUEAAVNJQ.jpg

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Unsettling Theatre

circular time, circular stage, one man playing multiple roles, Personification of non-human characters

Photo source: https://ent-nts.ca/workspace/uploads/faire-ecole/tec/projets-slideshow/huff_2-en-1367349827.jpg

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The Firehall Arts Centre: The Downtown East Side

Photo source: http://www.mygola.com/firehall-arts-centre-p136889/nearby-restaurants

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Questions:

What is the dialogue that is being established between the audience and the performer?

How does the audience contribute to this dialogue?

Nolan discusses the concept of good medicine and bad medicine via reviews, contextualizing the role of the audience by describing the potentiality of a “blocked” or “broken connection, the bad medicine of a dismissive or flippant or thoughtless review”(pg. 111). Does the success of this play, therefore, reflect the qualities of “good medicine”, as described by Nolan, through the act of ceremony? Why or why not?

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References

"Huff." Native Earth Performing Arts Inc. http://www.nativeearth.ca/huff/.

'Huff' Star on Topics Addressed in One-Man Play. News reel. Anonymous Toronto: CP24, 2016.

"Karin Randoja." Native Earth Performing Arts Inc. http://www.nativeearth.ca/huff-randoja/.

"Native Earth Performing Arts Inc." Twitter. https://twitter.com/NativeEarth?lang=en&lang=en.

Lachance, Lindsay. "Huff." Vancouverplays. http://www.vancouverplays.com/theatre/reviews/review_firehall_push_huff_16.shtml.

Nolan, Yvette. Medicine shows: Indigenous Performance Culture. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2015.

Singer-Wilson, Sasha. Finding the Courage to Breathe: A Review of Cliff Cardinal's "Huff". PRISM International, 5 February, 2016.

Thomson, Hannah. Review: Huff. Sadmag, 5 February, 2016.