Poet Bui Gian kisses Kim Cuong’s hand in this file photo.

A thespian with more than five decades of experience has more than a lifetime’s attachment to her art.

If her mother and her aunt – also her foster mother – had their way, she would have avoided the hardships that cai luong (southern folk opera) artists had to undergo many years ago.

But her desire was so strong that they had no option but to give in, and a legend was born.

Nguyen Thi Kim Cuong was born in Saigon in 1937 to a family that had four generations of artists.

Her father was show manager Nguyen Ngoc Cuong and her mother was the celebrated cai luong and dramatic artist Bay Nam.

Kim Cuong and her mother Bay Nam during one of their La Sau Rieng performances on stage.

As a child, she accompanied her parents on trips around the country, when she would observe intently and imitate every night the gestures of the actors in the troupe. She was only seven when she began performing on stage herself.

Her father died in 1946 and her parents’ troupe disintegrated after that.

Her mother and her aunt then disapproved of her artistic pursuits and kept her from the stage for fear that she would endure hardship like them.

She was 19 when she returned to the stage with a leading role in the play Giai nhan va ac quy (The beauty and the beast).

The year was 1956, and her rise to fame as the lead actress in her aunt’s Nam Phong cai luong troupe was almost instantaneous. The sobriquet that preceded her name was ky nu (extraordinarily gifted woman).

In the early 1960s, however, Cuong decided she wanted to switch to drama as a more effective means of dealing with social issues.

She set up the Kim Cuong drama troupe, the first of its kind in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City today).

She wrote her own plays, authoring around 80 scripts, many of which were signed Hoang Dung, her pseudonym.

Two years ago, the Vietnam Book of Records recognized Cuong as the most prolific playwright in the country.

Among her notable plays are Ao Nguoi Trinh Nu (The virgin’s dress), Tra Hoa Nu (The Lady of the Camellias), La Sau Rieng (Durian leaf), Duoi Hai Mau Ao (Beneath the color of the clothes), Nuoc Mat Con Toi (My child’s tears) and Toi La Me (I am a mother.)

The scripts of La Sau Rieng and Duoi Hai Mau Ao are personally important to her as these two scripts capture memories of her and her late mother, and portray the soul of the southern people, she once said.

La Sau Rieng narrates the story of a poor southern Vietnamese woman who sacrifices her life for the happiness of her children and husband.

In Duoi Hai Mau Ao, Cuong plays two sisters, with the younger sister being separated from her family at birth.

The elder sister, Bich is a naughty, spoilt girl while the younger sister, Be, is a hard-working, dutiful girl who later works as domestic help in her own family.

A man from a wealthy family wants to marry Bich, but she refuses. Her family has no other choice but to replace Bich with Be.

Cuong is also the first cai luong and drama artist to act in films, lending her talent to fairy tale productions like An Tiem- Qua Dua Do (An Tiem- the red watermelon) and Pham Cong Cuc Hoa with Viet Thanh Film Studio, the only one in Vietnam in the 1960s.

She has acted in more than 50 films in total.

Cuong says her performing style was strongly influenced by her late mother, and her late aunt, Nam Phi, who were among the founders of the southern region’s cai luong.

A mad man’s muse

Kim Cuong was also the muse of famous poet and translator Bui Giang for 40 years.

Giang, who died in 1998, was considered an original figure in the Vietnamese literature scene with his absurdist and philosophical poems as well as his translations of renowned literature and philosophical works including Saint Exupery’s Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), Andre Gide’s L’immoraliste (The Immoralist) and Albert Camus’s Le malentendu (The Misunderstanding).

The sanity of Bui Giang has been debated over the years as he often did unconventional and unpredictable things. He usually roamed and slept on the streets like a beggar and would get angry for no apparent reason.

That made Kim Cuong’s life sometimes very difficult as Giang could praise her warmly with his poems and at the same time curse and insult her.

Cuong, however, still respected and welcomed Bui Giang as a friend until the day he died.

Golden heart

The veteran artist is also a devout Buddhist and a great philanthropist.

There was a time she contemplated ending her life, and it was a venerated Buddhist monk’s – Zen Master Thanh Tu - teachings that help her regain her balance and feel motivated again.

She gradually learned to feel content with what she has, keep her lust for life in check and suppress her anger when people around her upset her.

Every time she feels downcast, she finds solace in Buddhist philosophy and at the Thuong Chieu Zen Monastery.

Cuong is easily moved to tears and deeply empathizes with others people’s sufferings and agonies, opening her heart to everyone. She devotes a lot of her time to doing charity work.

She is now vice chairwoman and patron of the HCMC associations for disabled people and orphans and a member of the standing committee of the city association for poor patients.

“As long as we do our best, more philanthropists will also join and lend a hand,” she says.

She is also very thrifty, believing “when many people still live in poverty, squandering money is a sin.”

She is retired and out of the limelight, but despite the suffering she has had to undergo, Cuong says she wants to be an artist in her next life.

Reported by Hoang Kim