Watch this performance on Facebook!

- - - -

As part of #CanadaPerforms, Montreal playwright and actor Norman Nawrocki will perform his newest play, EVICTION? DOG’S BLOOD!! Nick Zynchuk & Montreal’s Red Plateau, 1933 online in a livestream web broadcast.

EVICTION? DOG’S BLOOD!! is based on a true story that made 1933 Montreal headlines. In this gripping, 45-minute production, Nawrocki portrays Nick Zynchuk, a poor, unemployed, Polish-Ukrainian worker. During a protest when a crowd of 2,000 people tried to block a brutal eviction in Montreal’s Plateau district, the police murdered Znychuk. His funeral procession – the largest Montreal had ever seen – brought 30,000 mourners into the streets.

During the Depression, mass unemployment hit Montreal hardest in poor neighbourhoods like the Plateau. Trendy today, but known then as ‘The Red Plateau’ because of its radical, immigrant, working class population and culture, the area was rocked by evictions and organized, street-level resistance to them.

In today’s Canada-wide housing crisis fuelled by rampant speculation, gentrification and greed, tenants are again living in fear of their landlords, and being evicted en masse. Nawrocki’s timely play suggests an option: “stay and fight” – especially during and after the current COVID19 pandemic.

A long-time Montreal, Polish-Ukrainian-Canadian playwright, actor, musician, author and producer, Nawrocki has toured internationally with his work since 1986. He’s written, produced, directed, performed in and toured a few dozen theatrical and musical shows.