7/23/2023 0 Comments Vietnamese water puppetry disney![]() He went on to a monumental career as a puppeteer. Roosevelt’s Worker’s Progress Administration recovery project and began performing backyard puppet shows for his friends. Not long after that he took a puppet making class as part of Franklin D. The first puppet he owned, a Dutch-boy marionette, came to him at age 4 as a Christmas gift. It was a tie-in with the release of Disney’s 1937 animated film. His fascination began as a young child when he saw a Snow White marionette as part of a window display in the Robinson’s department store in Downtown L.A. This museum stemmed from the collection of 81-year-old curator Alan Cook, a native of South Pasadena, who has had a lifetime affair with all things puppet related. Many of the skits, especially those involving the tales of day-to-day living, often have a humorous twist.Puppet collector Alan Cook (photo by Nikki Kreuzer) Legends and national history are also told through short skits. Stories of the harvest, of fishing and of festivals are highlighted. It tells of day-to-day living in rural Vietnam and Vietnamese folk tales that are told by grandparents to their grandchildren. ![]() The theme of the skits is rural and has a strong reference to Vietnamese folklore. Spotlights and colorful flags adorn the stage and create a festive atmosphere. The puppets enter from either side of the stage, or emerge from the murky depths of the water. The musicians and the puppets interact during performance the musicians may yell a word of warning to a puppet in danger or a word of encouragement to a puppet in need. Singers of chèo (a form of opera originating in north Vietnam) sing songs which tell the story being acted out by the puppets. The bamboo flute's clear, simple notes may accompany royalty while the drums and cymbals may loudly announce a fire-breathing dragon's entrance. 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. 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. ![]()
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