Lookatvietnam – It is surprising that well-known expert of puppetry Nguyen Huy Hong, who is chairman of the Vietnam UNIMA Society and a member of the International Puppetry Association, left a 500.sq.m house in Hanoi to live in the countryside because of puppetry.

Researcher Nguyen Huy Hong.

Honouring water puppetry

50 years ago, a national water puppetry troupe was set up. Two years ago, Nguyen Huy Hong began researching puppetry. However, so far water puppetry has been handed down among the common people. There were no written documents about this art.

For many years, researcher Nguyen Huy Hong travelled all rural areas to collect and research puppets. The more he researched puppetry, the more he loved this folk art.

He says he has come to realise that water puppetry is the most special intangible cultural heritage of Vietnam. Many countries in the world have puppetry, but they don’t have water puppetry like Vietnam, a country which had a wet rice civilisation.

The researcher said the treasury of water puppetry among the common people is much more abundant than the water puppetry extracts on professional stages.

After dozens of years travelling throughout provinces in the Red River Delta and meeting around 30 amateur water puppetry troupes, he estimates there are as many as 600 ancient water puppetry plays. If similar plays are excluded, more than 200 diverse plays remain.

In the late 1980s, researcher Nguyen Huy Hong took 20 puppeteers from the amateur Nguyen Xa water puppetry troupe in Thai Binh province to Paris to introduce Vietnamese puppetry to European audiences.

After 50 years of researching puppetry, Nguyen Huy Hong has collected over 300 puppets of all kinds and around 5,000 books, photos, documents about puppetry of Vietnam and other countries. He has also written over 20 books about puppetry in Vietnamese and foreign languages.

Bringing puppetry to countryside

According to Nguyen Huy Hong, the origin of water puppetry is the countryside, not cities. Water puppetry plays often show farm and field work but the audience actually doesn’t know these jobs. If this art is brought back to the countryside, whenever the audience goes there to watch water puppetry, they will have to pass fields, ponds, etc. so they can see how the rural people live and further understand water puppetry plays.

The researcher also said worriedly that in the past 20 years, water puppetry has been reformed by adding voices, music, etc. while the traditional puppetry doesn’t have voices or music.

As the traditional features of water puppetry were not shown, Vietnam’s documents submitted to UNESCO to ask for recognition of water puppetry as an intangible cultural heritage were rejected.

At the age of 80, researcher Nguyen Huy Hong decided to build his own puppetry theatre in his hometown, Dong Vang village, Hoang Long commune, Phu Xuyen district, Hanoi.

He brought his collection from a 500sq.m house in Bui Xuong Trach street, Hanoi to Dong Vang village, 40km from Hanoi’s centre.

In Dong Vang village, the researcher built a water puppetry stage, a library and a museum of puppetry. He lives there alone to take care of the work.

“90% of documents about Vietnam’s puppetry are at my home. Besides the library and museum of puppetry, I also have several thousand books and pictures about puppetry,” he said.

Since he moved his collection of puppetry from Hanoi’s centre to Dong Vang village, many international experts have come to his house to seek documents about Vietnamese puppetry. Recently, 150 lecturers and students of the Industrial University visited the house to learn about Vietnam’s unique puppetry.

(Source: TP)