The Prop
Master's Dream

The Prop Master's Dream is a Cantonese opera documentary set in Vancouver's historic Chinatown, exploring how a centuries-old performance tradition continues to evolve within the Chinese Canadian diaspora. By following Rosa Cheng's effort to stage a new opera honouring Wah-Kwan Gwan, the film reveals a living cultural form that connects migration, community memory, and artistic innovation. Part cultural history and part creative portrait, it offers a rare look inside the world of Cantonese opera in North America.

About the Film

In a rapidly changing Vancouver Chinatown, master performer Rosa Cheng launches a groundbreaking project to revive the magical, centuries-old art of Cantonese Opera.

Her boldest creation pays tribute to Wah-Kwan Gwan (1929–2000), a legendary prop master of Chinese and Indigenous heritage who was raised in Guangdong. Though little known outside the Chinese community, he was deeply revered within it.

To honour his legacy, Rosa assembles a team of young artists to blend traditional Cantonese opera melodies with jazz, blues, and Indigenous rhythms.

Against the backdrop of a fading Chinatown and the urgency to save a vanishing art form, Rosa puts everything on the line to bring this dream to life. The Prop Master's Dream offers a rare documentary portrait of Cantonese opera in North America, capturing a living tradition at a moment of reinvention.

How April Brought This Together

April Liu 劉詩源 is an independent filmmaker, curator, and cultural programmer with a doctorate in East Asian Art History from UBC and more than a decade of deep work inside Vancouver's Chinese Canadian community. She authored Divine Threads, a major study of Cantonese Opera in Canada, and has worked across Vancouver's Chinese Canadian cultural organisations including Vancouver Cantonese Opera and the Chinatown Storytelling Centre, contributing through programming, events, grant writing, and community support. She knew this world from the inside long before a camera appeared.

Gregory first met April years earlier through mutual friends in the Vancouver film community. When Martyna was making A-Yi, her CBC-funded short documentary about an elderly Chinese can collector in East Vancouver, April came on as cultural advisor. She provided translation support and guidance on ethical storytelling with Chinese Canadian subjects, and appears in the film making the first outreach in Cantonese to A-Yi herself. That collaboration built a working trust between April and Adanac Films before The Prop Master's Dream existed.

Later, April commissioned Gregory to film documentary interviews with community elders for the Chinatown Storytelling Centre. One of those elders was Rosa Cheng.

After the camera stopped rolling on that first interview, Rosa continued telling stories about a mysterious figure who had shaped her life in Cantonese opera. That figure was Wah-Kwan Gwan.

When the conversation finished, Martyna turned to the group and said: this could be a documentary.

That moment became the starting point for the film. April, already embedded in both the Chinatown Storytelling Centre and the Vancouver Cantonese Opera community, was the natural person to direct it.

The Chinatown Storytelling Centre

The Chinatown Storytelling Centre is a community space in Vancouver dedicated to preserving and sharing Chinese Canadian history and culture. April Liu served there as Advisor of Development and Programming from 2022 to 2025, supporting programming, events, and storytelling initiatives connected to Vancouver's Chinese Canadian community.

It was through documentary interviews commissioned for the Centre that Gregory first filmed conversations with community elders, including Rosa Cheng. Those conversations became the earliest spark for The Prop Master's Dream. April's long relationships within Vancouver's Chinatown community made it possible for the film to grow from those initial interviews into a full documentary.

Adanac Films and the Production

Adanac Films, the studio run by Gregory and Martyna Czaplak, served as the production and post backbone of the film. Working closely with April Liu, they provided holistic support across producing, cinematography, editing, animation development, colour grading, and finishing.

Gregory led cinematography and editing while Martyna co-produced and helped shape the project from its earliest development through completion. Together they built the creative and technical infrastructure that allowed April's vision to move from concept to screen.

Wah-Kwan Gwan and the Opera

Wah-Kwan Gwan was born in Vancouver in 1929 to a Chinese father and an Indigenous mother. When he was one year old, his father took him back to Guangdong, leaving his mother behind. His father died the following year. Wah-Kwan was adopted by a Cantonese opera artist and grew up inside the form.

He returned to Vancouver as an adult speaking no English, only a Taishan dialect of Chinese, and eventually found his way back to the Cantonese opera community that Rosa Cheng would later be part of.

He became a prop master, a backstage presence without whom productions could not happen. Deeply known within that community and almost entirely invisible outside it. He died in 2000. Rosa had known him as her husband's mentor and as a friend. She never forgot him.

Before writing The Prop Master's Dream, Rosa had already experimented with ways to bring Cantonese opera to younger audiences, including a collaboration with an indie rock band. When the pandemic halted live performance in 2020, she began writing a new opera telling Wah-Kwan's story.

Making the Film

Three challenges shaped the film.

The first was the pandemic, which repeatedly interrupted production as performances were postponed and rebuilt.

The second was telling Wah-Kwan's early life. His childhood in Guangdong and journey back to Vancouver existed largely in oral history. To address this, the filmmakers developed 2D animated sequences based on April's historical research, translating those stories visually while maintaining the emotional language of Cantonese opera. The decision to animate wasn't aesthetic but structural — these were parts of Wah-Kwan's life the documentary had no camera access to, and reenactment felt wrong for a film this rooted in a specific community and a specific voice.

The third was the edit. A documentary about an opera in development is also a documentary about Rosa Cheng, about Vancouver's Chinatown, and about the fragile survival of a cultural tradition. Gregory worked through the footage with April to find the film's spine, deciding what it was actually about when you were standing inside it.

By the end of post-production the team had watched the opera performances so many times that Martyna could sing the Cantonese pieces from memory. At a late session, she was humming along to the percussion when Rosa looked at her and asked: did you learn Chinese?

She had not. She just knew the film.

Audience Response

Early viewers often remark on how the documentary reveals an art form that many assumed belonged only to the past.

For many audiences the film becomes both a rediscovery of Cantonese opera and an introduction to a cultural tradition that continues to adapt and survive.

Frequently Asked Questions

Get Involved

The Prop Master's Dream is not yet available to the public, but there are three ways to engage with the film when it is.