Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre

At the Thăng Long Water Puppet Theatre, the finest performers are the ones whose faces the audience never sees. The stage here has no floorboards at all. The stage is a sheet of water. And the leading actors are made of wood. Some weigh as much as ten kilograms, yet they still run, leap and swim as if they had breath of their own.

It sounds like a riddle in three parts. The first part is how a wooden puppet can travel across water on its own. The second is where the people who work it are hiding. The third is why a theater would choose water for its stage.

The theater stands at number 57B on Đinh Tiên Hoàng Street, right beside Hoan Kiem Lake. Inside the hall, another stretch of water waits under the lights. Behind it rises the water pavilion, also called the puppet house, with a thin bamboo screen hanging down across its front. That screen holds the answer to the first two riddles.

Behind the bamboo screen, about 20 puppeteers stand soaking in the water. The spot where they stand is called the buồng trò, the puppeteers' booth. They hold poles and pull strings, guiding the puppets from below the surface. The audience sees only a puppet gliding forward, turning its head, waving a hand. The people who create every one of those steps stay hidden behind the screen for the whole show. Some large puppets stand as tall as one meter, and it takes four people working together to make them move.

In the old days, the control pole was a length of bamboo or wood about three to four meters long, with a puppet fixed at one end. All this machinery stays out of sight under the water. That is why, seen from the seats, the puppet seems to come alive by itself.

Today the puppets are usually carved from light woods such as vàng tâm and dổi, which float easily. Then they are coated in traditional Vietnamese lacquer. Many are made by the puppeteers' own hands.

The answer to the third riddle lies much further back. Water puppetry is a folk art found only in the lowland plains of northern Vietnam, and it took shape in the time of the Lý dynasty. That dynasty lasted from 1009 to 1225. The art was born together with the civilization of wet rice farming. The first shows are thought to have been staged right in harvested rice fields, with water let in to make a stage.

The earliest written trace of water puppetry is a stone stele from the Sùng Thiện Diên Linh tower. It was put up in 1121. Its inscription describes a scene on rippling waves, where a golden turtle was set afloat carrying three mountains on its back. Then came gods and immortals, flocks of rare birds gathering, and auspicious deer moving in a troupe.

A show at the theater opens with a familiar character, Tễu. He is young and carefree, and he is the storyteller who leads the way across the water. Beside the puppeteers' booth sit the musicians, along with the artists who sing and speak the lines. Live music starts up, and the surface of the water begins to stir.

The theater still keeps 17 traditional pieces alive. Water puppetry has familiar scenes such as plowing and planting rice, herding ducks, buffalo fighting, frog fishing, and the dragon and lion dances. They tell of working life and the bonds between village neighbors. At one moment, amid the bright clash of cymbals, a wooden dragon suddenly rises out of the water.

Right beside Hoan Kiem Lake, the audience can also watch a piece tied to the lake's own legend. An old tale says that Emperor Lê was out boating on the lake when the Golden Turtle surfaced and asked for the magic sword back. That folk story is told with wooden puppets, just a few steps from the real lake.

But the theater has not always had a water stage of its own. It was founded on October 10, 1969, as the Kim Đồng Art Troupe, part of the Hanoi Department of Culture and Information. The troupe specialized in puppet shows on dry land for the children of the capital.

In its early days, the troupe lived in the basement of that department, at number 47 Hàng Dầu Street. Puppets and equipment went off to shows on three-wheeled carts. Sometimes the stage was the Army swimming pool. Sometimes it was the water pavilion of Ngọc Sơn Temple. The first plays were close to children's hearts, such as The Hare and the Tortoise and The Lazy Cat.

In 1975, the troupe was renamed the Hanoi Puppet Troupe, and the writer Tô Hoài and the composer Văn Cao lent a hand. In August 2001, it took a new name, the Thăng Long Water Puppet Theatre. That name comes from Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. Today the theater has its home on Đinh Tiên Hoàng Street, with its own auditorium, water pavilion and stage.

These days, the lights here almost never go out. The theater performs 365 days a year. It has been recognized as the only theater in Asia to fill the whole year with shows like this.

When it travels, the theater has to bring its stage along. That stage is a mobile water tank, and it needs about 60 cubic meters of water pumped in fast. The troupe has even gone up to Lâm Hà, in Lâm Đồng province, bringing its puppets to people in remote areas. In such far-off places, some viewers walked tens of kilometers. Some groups lit torches and walked all night, just to see the troupe perform.

Those puppets have performed in more than 40 countries. Late in 2024, on its 55th anniversary, the theater received the Third-Class Labor Order.

Now the riddle has its answers. The wooden puppet walks on water thanks to a pole, a string, and the hands of the people standing in the water. The performers hide behind the bamboo screen. And water is the stage because this art grew up in the flooded rice fields, more than 900 years ago. Even knowing all this, an audience will likely still jump when Tễu suddenly pops up on the water.

Then the show draws to a close. The music fades. The water still ripples faintly. And behind the thin bamboo screen, the people whose faces no one ever sees are still standing there in the water, waiting for the next show.