How the ancient art of Vietnamese water puppetry remains afloat

Carving process

Sculpted from a light wood, usually fig, a puppet on average can weigh up to 33 pounds. It can take two to three months to carve the puppet. Designers take care to paint layers of lacquer on the wood so it becomes water resistant. The wood is dried before any chiseling is done to avoid shrinkage and warping. Paint layers have to be dried one-by-one.

In the 2012 documentary Water Puppetry in Vietnam: An Ancient Tradition in a Modern World by Sam Peck, performer and artist Luu Huy Can of Bao Ha village names five elements in his troupe’s water puppetry: metal to control the bodies, wood to form the body, fire applied to the paint, water as a stage, and earth where the audience witnesses the show.

Thủy đình: Water stage

Staying waist deep for hours meant puppeteers of the olden days were exposed to water-borne risks such as disease and hypothermia. Whereas water puppet shows were once immersed in flooded rice paddies, puppet shows today have man-made pools resembling sacred houses. Puppeteers now can wear wetsuits underneath their clothing, but the cold remains a challenge for outdoor performers like Nguyễn Đình Hiệp of the Đồng Ngư guild. “We eat ginger and drink nước mắm (fish sauce) to keep the body warm,” he told Viet Nam News.

At showtime, the potbellied Chú Tễu, the master of ceremonies, springs out from the water to greet the audience and crack jokes against the government. On the side, a folk band is positioned with instruments ranging from drums and wooden bells, to horns, đàn bầu (monochord) and bamboo flutes. The chèo (Vietnamese opera) singers intonate folk songs.

Three puppets float on a golden dragon.

Courtesy of Vietnam National Puppetry Theatre

Don’t leak the guild secrets, or else

As told in Jones’ dissertation, a man once allegedly had his hand severed when he got too close to a rival guild’s water puppet to study its mechanism. This account of a phuong—tight-knit puppet guild—destroying the hand of a rival was to ensure he couldn’t replicate stolen secrets. In the Nguyen Xa phoung, anyone who leaked any secrets will allegedly unleash a curse against his family and their place in the afterlife. Creators might even construct false strings to confuse outsiders trying to pirate the mechanism. “Allegiance...goes so deep in the village that parents have been known to prevent marriages between young people associated with rival phoung,” writes Jones.

Since married women were expected to move out of their home village and thus could compromise secrets, the traditional practice of water puppetry historically excluded women on the additional assumption that women lacked the strength and a rural belief that cold, muddy water could infect the reproductive system. Then in 1972, the professional artform took this stroke toward gender equality: The first person—and by extension the first woman—hailing from a traditional guild, Nguyen Thi Chanh, was invited to the capital, Hanoi, to join a professional (rather than traditional or amateur) troupe.

The consequences of stealing trade secrets in Vietnamese water puppetry can be very serious.

Courtesy of Vietnam National Puppetry Theatre

Telling stories from history to today

From the rice paddy eons to its modern technical upscaling in lighting, Vietnamese water puppeteers performed idyllic routines depicting activities such as plowing with water buffalo or fishing. If the stories weren’t pastoral, they could be stories from history, such as the Trưng sisters, Vietnam’s national heroes, who rode their elephants to defeat the Han-dynasty Chinese oppressors. 

Other topics guilds have touched on include resistance against Chinese, French, or American soldiers invading Vietnam, as well as more modern-day issues such as climate change. In collaboration with the youth-led adaptation to climate change project led by Vietnamese youth, the Đồng Ngư Water Puppetry Troupe performed a 2023 presentation illustrating climate change-intensified disasters through vignettes of a community searching for a drowned child in a flood and confronting a forest fire.

In addition, on November 5, 2021, the Thăng Long Water Puppet Theater released a video-recording of a Covid-19-focused show in which a creature, portrayed by a human actor, spreads a plague and a procession of water puppets, wearing surgical masks, line up at vaccination stations.

Ebbs and flows: preservation and evolution

In 1956, while watching a Czechoslovakian puppetry troupe, President Hồ Chí Minh saw how puppetry could be used to mediate Vietnam’s image and artistic scene in its post-French colonialism era. Hồ backed a government initiative, from 1957-58, to revive water puppetry as a national art.

Subsidized by tourism and cultural departments, water puppetry has since been anchored in Vietnam, although troupes have ventured into international tours. Recently, Vietnamese American puppeteer Tommy Nguyen took the form as pearls of inspiration “to immigrate the form,” as he tells JoySauce, into the first Vietnamese American water puppetry musical, The Magnificent Ms. Pham, which recently premiered in Manhattan.

Nowadays, water puppetry serves as a conduit for Vietnam’s national identity, diplomacy and artistic preservation. These physical and spiritual vessels of the bygone rice paddy days dance among the primordial force of water. Determined to endure and evade evaporation, the form and its masters are taming the currents.

A scene from "The Magnificent Ms. Pham," which premiered in Manhattan.

Richard Termine