Director Hoang Duan, the pioneer of black-light puppetry in HCMC, is rescuing the neglected art form

Accomplished stage director Hoang Duan refuses to let the unique effects of ultraviolet light go to waste.

First introduced in Ho Chi Minh City in 2003 by director Hoang Duan, the art form quickly won rave reviews from critics and captured a large audience.

Other directors soon followed his lead and began to stage black-light puppet shows for children.

The Ho Chi Minh City Drama Theater joined in with a show called The gioi co tich (World of fairy tales) every Sunday at 30 Tran Hung Dao Street.

To the dismay of many, the burst of enthusiasm was not enough to save the advanced puppetry from a lack of funding and skilled technicians, and it slowly dwindled away, though not in the heart of Duan.

Now the crusading director is on a mission to revive the art form in HCMC.

“I became engrossed in other projects and had no time to go on developing black-light puppetry. But I still have my plan for creating a really impressive black-light and musical puppet play that incorporates other entertainment like circus acts and sleight-of-hand magic,” he said.

Duan is looking for sponsors so that he can hire professional staff and import modern equipment. It might sound like early days, but he promises that black-light puppets will return in the very near future.

“Despite all the obstacles, the lack of funding and facilities, I am undaunted,” he said.

“Thanks to my foreign visits for the Ho Chi Minh City Puppet Association, I got the chance to learn more about black-light puppetry in America.

“It was really amazing and made me wonder: Why not bring this awesome entertainment to Vietnamese children?

“I returned and submitted my project, but the association thought it was too risky and turned me down. Fortunately for me, Tan Binh District Cultural House liked my idea and promised support,” said Duan.

His first foray into black-light puppetry was the experimental play Ke trom (Thief) on Ho Chi Minh City Television. The viewing public’s warm reception of the show encouraged Duan to try a second one.

At the first Ho Chi Minh City Children’s Theater Festival in 2003, his 40-minute black-light puppet play Vi sao thuong luong hoa rong? (Why does the water serpent turn into a dragon?) got rave reviews from the critics and enthusiastic applause from the spectators, and won Duan the award for Best Director.

He is also known as the man behind Tieng noi tre tho (Children’s voices), a project that the Ho Chi Minh City Drama Troupe began in 2007 to entertain and educate orphaned, poor and disabled children, with funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Since its inception, artists from the drama troupe have entertained the children who live at the SOS Village in HCMC, Bo De Pagoda in Binh Duong Province, and orphanages and other shelters in rural areas of the central coast and highlands.

What is it?

Black-light puppetry capitalizes on the novelty of ultraviolet light, which only illuminates objects coated with a fluorescent paint. It is a far cry from what most people would call a marionette show.

Although it is best understood by watching rather than reading about it, the concepts and techniques are simple enough.

The fundamental principle lies in the fact that the human eye cannot distinguish a black object on a black background. Used first in China, it was adopted by a Japanese puppet troupe and later introduced into Europe by French puppeteers.

It gives the puppeteers greater scope to create fantastic animated movements, and much besides. The puppeteers become “men in black” as they control the characters and create amazing visual effects by capitalizing on the reaction of fluorescent puppets under UV lighting.

These techniques allow the puppets to seemingly float in the air, fly, appear and disappear right in front of the audience like magic.

The paint that coats the objects on stage is not just fluorescent; it should also be a light color, like yellow or orange, so that the objects on stage glow brightly in the otherwise pitch-black theater. The black of the background and parts of the costumes is matt as a glossy finish would reflect the light from the glowing puppets.

Yet for all the technology and the gimmicks it allows, Duan reminds us, the most important factor of black-light and any other form of puppetry is the human element and the childlike appreciation of the age-old art form.

Reported by Kim