Watching water puppets in the village. We do not know whether water puppets appear in other countries or whether they remain only in Vietnam, but we do know that they continue to spread to gain intimacy with their audience.
If you want to see water puppets in their true environment, you must watch them in the cradle where they began, in the open air in a village of the Red River Delta. Two years ago, I had the good fortune to see such a performance in Dao Thuc, a village of two thousand people about 25 kilometers from Hanoi. It was drizzling that day. The pagoda stage rested in the midst of a green rice paddy, with many villagers sitting all around on three sides of a pond. The fourth side was reserved for the stage, which had been set in the water.
The performance was organized to celebrate spring in the village. It was not done by professionals but instead by farmers, who, as members of the village organization, had made their own puppets and had practiced with them. The characters were old and young, large and small, men and women, taking part in activities of ordinary life, including cultivating rice, catching fish, and tending ducks, with everyone laughing when a fox nabbed a duck or when Teu joked.
Chu Teu
As I watched the audience, I saw how moved they were at the deep meaning in an artistic profession of ordinary people that dates back 2,000 years. Water puppets as reflection of culture Water puppets are a form of culture from the Red River Delta, an area that is hot and humid. The land is filled with rivers, and every village has a pond or lake that can be used as a theater. The weather must be warm since the performers stand in water for hours. During the time of French colonialism, urban people did not know about water puppets because they were performed only in the countryside and only for local villagers to see.
As a result, water-puppet scenery is entirely rural: rice paddies, bamboo gates, fishponds, banyan trees, wells, and village temples. In order to liven the performance, the scenery includes action: cultivating with water buffalo, irrigating, harvesting and winnowing rice, weaving, kids jumping, and swimming fish and frogs. Aside from farmers, there are village workers (sawyers, blacksmiths, and carpenters). All the setting I from within the village, complete with processions dancing unicorns, dragons, turtles, and phoenixes. The stories used are from Vietnamese traditional theater (cheo or tuong) common to the countryside or taken from history (heroes who have resisted invaders). Most likely the water puppets began as a ceremony to pray that the rice crop would have sufficient water. For that reason, the dragon characters are particularly important. Vietnamese water puppet performances now have a lively philosophy that fits the wishes and needs of Red River Delta farmers making their living from wet-rice cultivation. Such farmers must work hard outside the rice paddies, always fighting against floods and foreign invaders. But since farmers love nature and the rice fields’ intimacy with earth and water, the water puppets praise the labor, perseverance, and optimism such a life requires. But there’s no lack of double meaning and satire when criticizing errors.
The script of a water puppet performance prizes labor, the village, and the family. Good and evil are part of the performance, with good bringing happiness, and evil bringing its own lessons. Regarding spiritual life, water puppets incorporate animism and also the influence of many groups. In watching water puppets, one can see the influence of Buddhism, Taoism, and most of all, of Chinese Confucianism mixed with local beliefs without a loss to the local culture. When water puppets are performed in the rice paddies, spectators see that people and spirits are together in one climate of pantheism.
What does Vietnamese puppets say?
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