Interview with Rosa Cheng

And when I was in Jin Wah Sing 振華聲 in 1993, I saw a gentleman sitting at the corner of Jin Wah Sing, by himself. Nobody talked to him. Then gradually when we had [a] performance in [the] Chinese Cultural Centre, Jin Wah Sing, he was the one in charge of backstage. And we talked. And we call him Wah-sook, Uncle Wah. And he speak Toisan, but he looks Indigenous. So eventually, I realized that he was also a Cantonese opera performer and he sang Cantonese opera. He was good. He was professionally trained and he was trained in Guangzhou. Then eventually I learned that he came back from China. So it's been in my mind for many years. I was also thinking of writing this opera. So I start writing the script. And at the beginning, the script is not good, because no body. Wah-sook passed away in the year 2000. So, before that, it never happened for me to ask him about his life. The most is, we met him and he loved to go to dim sum, so we took him to Pink Pearl Dim Sum. And he's very nice, very nice. He taught my husband everything about the backstage. But then, when we interviewed the landlord of Wah-sook. He stayed in one of the Chinatown's rooming house. He said, "You know Wah-sook’s  father was Chinese and his mother was Indigenous.” Okay, so that opened up a different story. So I started searching on the internet looking for, like, Wah-sook was born in 1929. So his father, maybe something, 18-something, during, before the Exclusion Act. I wrote the script, and then I wrote it in English because my Chinese writing is terrible. And then after that, we sent it, sent the whole script to Hong Kong. We find a playwright, Leo Lee, so he will do the script in Cantonese opera style. So that's how we did the first fusion opera, The Prop Master's Dream, at the Annex Theatre. It’s only 200 seats. Two shows, full house. I was getting ambitious, so I'll do the remount in 2024. But then for this, the one that we remount at Vancouver Playhouse, so everything is different. And then I was thinking, how can we make it even more interesting? So I add in the English rapping as the introduction in each act, narrations. So I find Gerry, Gerry Sung, actually he stole the show. Like when he came out to do the rapping, people [mimics people cheering]. So, people didn't expect that. And maybe because of him, we have some new younger generations. See, I told you, destiny [laughs].