

The instrumentation includes vocals, drums, wooden bells, cymbals, horns, đàn bầu (monochord), gongs, and bamboo flutes. Ī traditional Vietnamese orchestra provides background music accompaniment. It also hides the puppet strings and puppeteer movements, improves the musical and vocal acoustics, and provides a shimmering lighting effect. The water acts as the stage for the puppets, and as a symbolic link to the rice harvest. The original water puppet festivals were literally held inside a rice paddy, with a pagoda built on top to hide the puppeteers who stand in the waist-deep water. Rice, the main staple of the Vietnamese diet, is usually grown in paddy fields.

The puppets are carved out of wood and often weigh up to 15 kg. Up to 8 puppeteers stand behind a split-bamboo screen, decorated to resemble a temple facade, and control the puppets using long bamboo rods and string mechanism hidden beneath the water surface.
Vietnamese water puppetry dsymbolism portable#
Performance today occurs on one of three venues-on traditional ponds in villages where a staging area has been set up, on portable tanks built for traveling performers, or in a specialized building where a pool stage has been constructed. Modern water puppetry is performed in a pool of water 4 meters square with the water surface being the stage. The players were presenting themselves at the end of the show. A water puppet theater show in Hanoi, Vietnam.
