country known for the art of water puppetry

The traditional puppetry has been preserved and developed thanks to the Ma Quang family through their 13 generations. Outstanding among these areas is Tham Roc puppet village, a Tay minority village in Dinh Hoa district, Thai Nguyen province. Without love with career, or shortage of the patence, or lack of the date to sacrifice for art of the great puppet artists, it is probably not possible for maintaining and developing such a unique and outstanding form of folk art.īeside the Central Puppet Theatre and Thang Long Puppet Theatre, there are some well-known puppet villages such as Dao Thuc, Te Tieu, Trang Son, Binh Phu, Thach Xa, Nguyen Xa and Nam Chan. Only watching these perfomances, people can feel and comprehense partly the difficulties and hardships that the artists facing. Through the controlling system, the artists have to concentrate attentively on their work to ensure the puppets performance suites with the content of the scripts. The body will float on the water surface and the foot is where the controlling system is attached.

The appearance of the puppets would be funny and cute with two parts – the body and the foot. The puppets are made from wood of fig trees so that the “casts” appear on the water surface. The weather condition should be moderate to make sure the artists controlling puppets in water will not be cold, moreover, either too swallow or deep is the water degree, it is imposible for performing”. During a puppet show, there are dozens of strings to control, so they need to remember which one first and which comes next. Some artists shared: “the difficulty of controlling water puppets is the systems of controller under water, which they cannot see, therefore, it requires much concentration. On the water satge, the wood puppets flexibly move thanks to the controlling of the artists behind the font through the system of strings and rod. In deed, the water puppetry performances always bring visitors with cheerful laughters and relaxing moments for audiences, though, it just simply to replay the daily activities of the farmers such as grazing buffalos, plowing, fishing or repertoire of fairy dancing or dragon dancing. However, conservating, preserving and developing the “precious pearl” is a great concerning issue and challenges of the artists who consider this as their life and of the audiences who love this kind of folk art, particularly in the duration of econimy integration.Ī work of water puppetry, introduced to the public, is the crystallization of the skillful hands and creativeness.

Moreover, this traditional art also attracts the concern of numerous foreign guests, and many traditional water puppetry shows were introduced and performed inand open to the public of many different nations in the world. The stage of water puppetry together with the uniqueness in the performing art and controlling the puppets make this an indispensible spiritual food for a large number of capital citizens. The sculpture of this form of art based nothing on any model or patterns but basing on the scripts, so it requires the boundless creativity of the artists. This is considered the most significant factor and played important role and as a mean of transfering the soul of the artists into the performance and to inspire the audiences. When mentioning the water puppetry art, the first thing to mention is the visual arts or in other word, sculpture. However, the most particular type of puppetry is water puppetry because of the special stage and funny and lovely casts who are designed simply.

Puppetry consists of different types of puppet shows such as hand puppetry show, rod puppetry show, string puppetry, funeral home puppetry, mask puppetry, flute kite puppetry, toy puppetry,….

Country known for the art of water puppetry