The Prop Master’s Dream, a fusion opera, pays tribute to a unique soul

Vancouver Cantonese Opera production at the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival honours the late Wah-Kwan Gwan

By Gail Johnson

Cheri Maracle (left) and Jackie Lam in The Prop Master’s Dream. Photo by David Cooper

The Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival presents Vancouver Cantonese Opera’s The Prop Master’s Dream at the Vancouver Playhouse on November 2 at 2 pm and 7:30 pm

ROSA CHENG, THE founder and artistic director of Vancouver Cantonese Opera, was good friends with Wah-Kwan Gwan, a gentleman who was born to a Chinese father and an Indigenous mother in Vancouver in 1929. When he was just a year old, Gwan was taken to China by his father, who left his mother behind. A year later, his dad died, and Gwan was adopted by a Cantonese opera artist.

At age 18, Gwan returned to Canada’s West Coast. In addition to becoming a performer himself, he went on to be the stage manager for Cheng’s company, helping Vancouver Cantonese Opera get off the ground when it formed in early 2000. He died later that year, but his legacy lives on in The Prop Master’s Dream, a fusion Cantonese opera that tells his life story.

The work had its world premiere in 2022, and a new version is having its debut at the 2024 Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival. Cheng wrote the script largely based on conversations she had with Gwan’s landlord, who Gwan considered a friend, and it’s the only thing about the epic production that hasn’t changed since its inception.

Elsewhere, The Prop Master’s Dream now has modern jazz as part of its score, which also features Indigenous drumming; enhanced lighting by esteemed designer Itai Erdal (who recently made the shortlist for this year’s Siminovitch Prize); and dreamy new video projections by filmmaker Anthony Lee. The Cantonese opera cast will be joined by revered Haudenosaunee-Irish actress and singer Cheri Maracle and Chinese Canadian rap narrator Gerry Sung. In sharing Gwan’s personal history, the work reveals historical and cultural details about Vancouver’s Chinese community.

“He was my husband’s mentor,” Cheng says in a phone interview with Stir. “He was our good friend. He was always on my mind. When the pandemic hit, I was thinking about how with Cantonese opera, we really need to update the art form in Canada. If we only speak and sing in Cantonese, for the duration of a play that’s over two or three hours, for someone who doesn’t speak Cantonese and has to watch subtitles it’s very difficult. I thought, what I’m going to do is jump off the airplane without a parachute and write a script for a fusion opera. I’m going to write Wah-Kwan’s story.”

Rosa Cheng. Photo by David Cooper

It’s not clear why Gwan’s father took him to China, but Cheng has a theory. With Chinese people subjected to dangerous or low-status jobs building the CP railway, their working conditions were harsh, and many young men became weak or ill after spending years in the trenches. Many wanted to return home to be buried in their homeland. Another potential reason for leaving Canada was the Chinese head tax, which would have made it difficult for Gwan’s father to bring his family over.

“Why did Wah-Kwan come back to Canada? The landlord told us that in China he was being discriminated against by his peers because he looked different; he looked Indigenous,” Cheng says.

During the period of Canada’s Chinese Exclusion Act, from 1923 to 1947, when Chinese immigration was forbidden by law, a Chinese bachelor’s society formed.

“There were many, many single men,” Cheng says. “They experienced loneliness and hardship but they also had very good relationships with Indigenous people, and some of them built a relationship with an Indigenous woman and formed a family,” Cheng says. “Wah-Kwan’s life was very much shaped by the history of that time.”

Another story Gwan’s landlord told Cheng was about how Gwan gifted his landlord a big stack of VHS videos of James Bond movies, which was his one treasured possession.

“He was poor, but he was someone that people should remember, someone unique,” Cheng says. “He had a unique story. I wanted to do this opera to pay tribute to him.”  

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