A Preview "The Prop Master's Dream" A fusion Cantonese Opera Workshop

Access

About

A Preview of "The Prop Master's Dream". 30 minutes.

"The Prop Master's Dream" is an innovative and experimental fusion opera. The goal is to raise awareness of the historical racial discrimination against Canadian Chinese and the Indigenous people. It is essential to effectively work toward the elimination of racial discrimination and inequality. Changing attitude and understanding is the key.

The Prop Master’s Dream is a fictional story inspired by the true-life story of Mr. Wah-Kwan Gwan (1929-2000), a legendary figure in Vancouver’s Cantonese opera community. Wah-Kwan was born to a Chinese father and an Indigenous mother. His father returned to China with Wah-Kwan when he was 1 year old. Wah Kwan’s father left behind his Indigenous wife and daughter. Wah-Kwan was raised in Kaiping, China, and was trained as a Cantonese opera artist and a prop maker. When he became an adult, he returned to Vancouver to look for his birth mother. Wah-Kwan’s story is about cultural transformation and it takes us across the oceans between Canada and China. When he returned to his homeland, Vancouver, he faced many challenges of racism and labour exploitation. Eventually, he found his solace and connection in the Cantonese opera societies in Chinatown. For Wah Kwan, the art of prop making became a vital form of self-expression and connecting with the community. This is a unique story of two cultures, the Chinese Canadian and the Indigenous people. It is a story of displacement, resilience, and the intercultural memories of Vancouver’s Chinatown. The opera will bring together diverse performers and musicians to share the extraordinary true-life story of Wah-Kwan Gwan. "The Prop Master’s Dream" is a bilingual Chinese-English production. The musical composition of this opera reflects the difference between the two cultures, so we decided to go outside the box of traditional Cantonese Opera. In this new opera, we will weave together Cantonese opera singing with Indigenous singing, drumming, and Jazz musical traditions. Our event is to introduce to the audience the historical context of this opera, and the story background of this unique fusion opera.

Links

• Vancouver Cantonese Opera website upcoming events vancanopera.com
• Make donation vancanopera.com

Organizer

Vancouver Cantonese Opera

Vancouver Cantonese Opera is uniquely situated as a Canadian arts organization deeply rooted in its local community yet maintaining strong global ties to the opera scenes in China, Hong Kong, and North America. We work closely with performers and audiences at home and abroad, exchanging ideas and mutual support.

In the local context of Vancouver, BC, our organization continues to serve the Chinese-Canadian community as a site of creative expression, social bonding, and cultural exchange. While our current audience is primarily Chinese-Canadian opera fans, we have a growing audience of diverse Canadians. What distinguishes our work from other opera troupes is our focus on outreach to broad audiences, including non-Chinese viewers, youth, and families. Our performances are subtitled in English and we provide workshops, demos, and classes in English to a general audience. We have brought our performances outside the traditional theatre, to perform in libraries, community centers, and cultural festivals.

The rapid gentrification of Vancouver’s historic Chinatown in recent years has raised the stakes for our work, as we struggle to keep alive the stories and theatrical practices so rooted in Chinatown’s history and culture. Despite our best efforts, we believe that bolder steps need to be taken to safeguard our traditional heritage. Therefore, our creative vision for the future is to engage more effectively and strategically in reaching out to new audiences, especially the younger generation who must carry the torch with our art form.

We realize dramatic steps are needed to realize this goal and that a single-minded focus on innovation and risk-taking is both necessary and desirable. We have thus reached out to new community partners to engage in more creative forms of performance and outreach. In particular, we plan on working with the younger generation of performers and artists to launch an exciting, new repertoire of performances that incorporates new media. Building on our past successes and strong local following, we believe this new direction has great potential to address our broader goal of sustaining the Chinese-Canadian heritage in a meaningful, open-minded, sustainable, and creative way.