Tonight I joined a few of the tour group to attend Nhà há Múa roi Thang Long, or more commonly known to us westerners as the Water Puppet Theater.
There is not a lot of information given about history or origin of this art form other than it is Vietnamese oldest art form. This company draws the largest number of foreign tourists than any other theater. It has traveled to over 70 countries, and is open 365 days a year.
The puppets are made of wood from what we could tell, and are controlled from long sticks. The puppeteers are behind a screen, standing waste deep in water and manipulating the puppets from these sticks under the surface.
Accompanied by live traditional music, the performance is a series of short poems or stories of what appeared to be a continuous story, but not. There were 17 ‘scenes’ defined in the program, with titles ranging from ‘Apparition of Festival Flags’ to ‘little boy with flute on Buffalo’, to ‘Glorious return of the candidates to his native village to pay thanks to the ancestors after his success in the national examination.’
Having been to the temple of literature earlier in the day, that one caught me because now I understood what it meant. But it was also the longest title on the program.
I would recommend this to anyone. I admit I dosed off for a minute or two after a long day, but that was not due to the performance. It was lively, playful and something not seen in my part of the world. I was tired and the cadence lulled me off.
It was also annoying to sit in an audience, who talked through the performance and held up their phones to film it. I guess it is a tourist attraction, and in today’s world the best advertising is social media, but that does not excuse rude behavior.
Or perhaps it does. I am forced to examine my concepts of behavior every day of this journey, so I am not sure anymore what I think is rude. And, I will admit… I took a short video in the last minute of the performance, so… when in Rome.
On the up side, the puppets did not appear to mind being victim of the paparazzi, although the woman on the lead instrument, (which I have no idea what it was and that is unusual for me to say) either was sitting on a stick or was annoyed. Given I’m sure she endures the cameras multiple times per day, I’m tending toward the stick theory.
