The campus of FPT Polytechnic College in Da Nang has turned busier than usual because of a special event. Here, a puppet stage of more than 40 square meters was set up with land and water puppet shows based on traditional music and modern dance. More than 200 spectators enjoyed watching the unique performance with puppet images a buffalo plowing the fields, the four dragons - unicorns - turtles - phoenixes, and farmers.

The ‘Here is a festival’ that recreates the traditional water puppetry space with young people. Photo: N.D

The art program titled ‘Here is a festival’ is a project honouring the folk art of water puppetry launched by the ‘More and more’ group consisting of 7 students majoring in PR & Event Organisation at the FPT Polytechnic Da Nang College. With the goal of bringing a unique experience and spreading meaningful values to the community and society, the group came together to come up with such a highly practical idea to organise this event.

The group’s representative, student Nguyen Thi Bi said, “Water puppetry is a type of folk theater with national characteristics, only found in Viet Nam. Through the event, the group hopes to recreate the unique beauty and emphasise the position of water puppetry compared to other types of theater, thereby spreading the unique value of this folk art type to everyone, especially the young”.

During over 2 hours of the programme, ‘Here is a Festival’ featured not only water puppetry but also land puppetry with a puppet show inspired by the traditional Apsara dance of the Cham people or a unique hand puppet show featuring the ballet ‘Swan Lake’ by Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Previously, ‘More and more’ had organised such other impressive events as ‘Bee Singer’ and ‘Xanh (Green)’ with great success in both scale and quality of organisation, spreading attraction to Da Nang students.

However, with ‘Here is a festival’, the group faced many challenges during the first time they approached water puppetry. The members spent a lot of time learning deeply about this art form, researching and organising the programme so that it could accurately recreate the characteristics of water puppetry, conveying this type of art to viewers in the most accurate way possible in tandem with still bring brought a new creative breeze.

Next was the story of how to attract a large number of young people to participate in the event or recreate a water stage right in the middle of the school yard, along with consider the story of balancing finances for the programme organisatio. Also, inviting artistes to join the show is also a challenge because water puppetry is one the verge of falling into oblivion and few people are still able to keep the profession alive.

Luckily, the group received support from the artists of Hue Ancient Puppet Theater. Regardless of the distance, they produced the highest quality and most unique performances in a space rich in national cultural identity at the ‘Here is a festival’ show.

Director and solo artiste Nguyen Phi Tuan, the Director of the Hue Ancient Puppet Theater, has been ‘falling in love’ with puppetry since he was young.

Participating in the ‘Here is a festival’ as a guest performer, he couldn't help but feel emotional: “We are really happy and proud because it has been a long time since young people have contacted the theater to organise an event with the  aim of promote puppetry art. The determination of young people who dare to think and do has completely convinced us to participate in the event. Hopefully there will be more water puppet theater events in schools to preserve and spread the spirit of love for Vietnamese cultural arts and especially water puppet art’.

Director Nguyen Phi Tuan further shared that the happy thing is that young people have been having love and interest in traditional arts and culture, including puppetry. According to him, in the context of the Industry 4.0 era, when people have many cultural choices, traditional arts are the foundation and source for young people to be creative in the spirit of ‘integration rather than assimilation’. That is also the spirit of the ‘More and more’ group when organizing events as it preserves water puppetry culture but at the same time finding innovations to better suit the updated trends without losing core elite values.

As for the young people being present at ‘Here is a festival’, many of them saw water puppetry in real life for the first time. “I realized that water puppetry is more attractive and interesting than I thought. Before that, I had only seen water puppetry on television, but when I directly saw the artistes controlling the puppets and "breathing life" into them, I understood their enthusiasm and the values of this art. If possible, I hope there will be more programmes like this for young people.”, said Le Thanh Ha, a student at the University of Education.

Sitting and watching the event organised by students, Mr. Nguyen Dinh An, the Director of the FPT Polytechnic College in Da Nang, could not help but feel proud: “Water puppetry is a unique cultural form but rarely has the opportunity to be organised in schools like this. So, our wish is that students-organise events that preserve and promote traditional cultural values will not only the practice session in the field of study but will be spread on a wider scale. Each student will be a cultural ambassador, preserving and spreading the country's core traditions”.

Reporting by NAM DINH - Translating by A.THU