Wade through water

The Hong Phong Puppet Troupe have revived the art of water puppetry in their village in Hai Duong province, but the puppeteers can’t be sure that the next generation will keep the flame alive.
Two members of Hong Phong Water Puppetry Troupe slip into their wetsuits before sliding into a pool of water clutching fireworks and dragon puppets. The two puppeteers will start the performance with more of a bang than a splash.
The fireworks explode as the two dragons slink under the bamboo screen that separates the audience from the performers.
When the scene with the dragons concludes, the two puppeteers quickly make way for three colleagues, who orchestrate a procession of mandarins on horseback across the water. There’s no time for messing around.
“We do 15 acts in 45 minutes,” says the stage director, 62-year-old Nguyen Xuan Chiem with his eyes fixed on the performers. The troupe comes from Bo Duong village in Hong Phong commune in Hai Duong province’s Ninh Giang district. Here water puppetry has a 300-year-old history. The puppeteers famously put everything into each and every performance. Afterwards they will return to their normal jobs as rice farmers, carpenters, even doctors.
That’s how it’s always been. Water puppetry originated in the paddy fields of communities in the Red River delta – the theory being that the annual flooding and enforced inactivity inspired the first puppet shows (some people say the epiphany happened when religious statues were seen floating out of a flooded temple!). The puppeteers were never professionals, just local villagers entertaining their neighbours.
The shows graduated from the fields to communal houses where there is always a large pond or small lake – the perfect stage for water puppetry. Villagers would gather for shows during special festivals or after the harvest.
However puppetry came about the inventors should be considered geniuses. The water is the perfect platform for puppets. The puppeteers can be concealed behind bamboo. The apparatus used to manipulate the puppets is also submerged.
The water itself serves as a barometer for the narrative. Calm and flat when fairies appear to sing and dance, it becomes a heaving tempest when a battle breaks out with the participation of fire-spitting dragons.
The shows recount mythical tales from ancient folklore as well as yarns that depict daily life in the fields. As a result water puppetry is considered to be a window into Vietnam’s soul. Though the Hong Phong troupe are fond of tweaking things to keep modern audiences interested: in the troupe’s version of The Frog Sues Heaven, a thief sneaks into a Buddhist pagoda under the cover of a dark and stormy night, and steals antique statues, aiming to sell them to overseas buyers.
As morning breaks, the villagers and the local animals discover their loss and after seeking help from the Jade King of Heaven, finally catch the thief and after a quick trial, under Article 272 of the Criminal Code, the thief is dispatched to jail for three years.
The village people
“We only know that in our village communal house, which was built in the late Le dynasty, there are many wooden reliefs depicting scenes of water puppetry. So we believe water puppetry appeared here in the 17th century,” says Chiem.
The villagers even performed as the country struggled in a decades-long war for independence against the French and the US. “The puppet shows were only performed for very special events,” says 52-year-old Nguyen Van Khoi, whose family has made puppets and performed in shows for five generations.
Even after the threat of war faded, water puppetry, along with every kind of performance art, slid into decline as Vietnam’s economy floundered. “Almost no one in the village thought about water puppetry. We had to keep our livelihoods afloat,” says Khoi.
But in 1989, Chiem retired from the national railway company and decided to put his heart and mind into reviving the art. “At that time, I went to every house in the village and asked people to help restore the art. We raised money to buy wood and make puppets and rebuild the village’s communal house where we could stage shows,” says Chiem.
On May 19 of that same year, in honour of Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, the Hong Phong troupe debuted. The show was a success and shows were soon being regularly held. Puppet-makers were sent off to research how to make puppets and enhance performances. According to Chiem, the troupe’s puppets are bigger than those used by professional water puppetry troupes as they are performed on village ponds.
Now the troupe has contracts with local and foreign travel agencies in northern Vietnam and hosts puppet shows for tourists. “We either invite tourists to come to our village or travel to another location to perform,” says Chiem.
“We have also cooperated with the Thang Long Puppetry Theatre in Hanoi to perform in many provinces and museums,” adds another member of the troupe, Nguyen Van Bon. Tourism has helped members of the troupe enjoy a better standard of living in recent years though nobody is giving up the day job just yet.
“We do it for love, not for money,” says Bon. The puppeteers believe that the most important thing is that the art survives and that people want to watch. This inspires the troupe to keep going. But most of the puppeteers are no spring chickens. No one is kidding themselves that in the future water puppetry may once again slide into decline.
“We don’t think that the younger generations in our village will follow our work,” says Chiem. “They have too many choices and ways to make a living. Most of our young people will go to the city to live and work.”