Water Puppet Show in Hanoi, Vietnam
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Synopsis
On a surface of water, a succession of brief vignettes moves through Vietnamese rural life —rice planting, fishing, harvest festivals and folk legends, including the tale of Le Loi and the Golden Turtle— performed by puppets that glide, leap and breathe fire. The clown Chú Tễu opens the show with sharp wit, setting the register for everything that follows. A live traditional orchestra, with the single-string đàn bầu and chèo operatic voices, narrates each scene and gives the figures their voices.
Context & Trivia
Múa rối nước was born roughly a thousand years ago in the Red River Delta during the Ly dynasty, when performances took place in flooded rice paddies after the harvest as part of religious festivals. The puppets are carved from sung wood —a local fig timber prized for its lightness and buoyancy—, coated in multiple layers of waterproof lacquer and bright paint, and can stand between 30 and 100 cm tall, weighing up to 15 kg.
The manipulation technique is one of the craft's most closely guarded secrets: puppeteers work hidden behind a bamboo curtain, standing waist-deep in water, controlling the figures through a system of long rods and submerged strings that makes them appear to move entirely on their own. Mastering the mechanism takes decades, and the skill passes through tightly knit artisanal lineages.
The Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre in Hanoi, founded in 1969, is the venue documented in this 2019 recording. The Asia Record Center has recognized it as the only theatre in Asia staging water puppet performances every day of the year —365 days without interruption— which makes it an unavoidable point of reference for any curated archive of puppetry arts.
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