Museu da Marioneta

The Water Puppets of Vietnam are made of wood and fabric, painted in bright and contrasting colours and have a shine similar to a lacquer effect.
Recycled materials are often used to make the puppets, such as pieces of old rubber tires, bicycle chains to create the winding moves of the mythological serpent or lion, and wickerwork from daily objects.
The puppets are placed on a light wooden platform which allows and facilitates their fluctuation and sliding over water—the element from which their name derives.
In fact, these puppets are always manipulated in water tanks. The puppeteers have water up to their waists and are hidden from the public by a simple curtain hung on a bamboo structure. Their manipulation is made through longer or shorter bamboo sticks connected by casters to the small wooden platforms which allow the puppets to fluctuate. Strings run inside these sticks and it is their manipulation that gives life and movement to the puppets.
The water over which the puppets graciously slide, and hide the ones who move them, contributes to individualize this unique tradition. The magic of the Roi Nuoc is further enhanced by the use of fire, rockets and fireworks, water spouts, and is accompanied by background music, sound effects and the sung narration of the enacted scene, legend or story.
The tradition of Water Puppets is related to animist fertility rituals and the agrarian cycles of the fields and villages of the Red River, in northern Vietnam. These practices were protected by the Court, especially in the Ly and Tran dynasties, between the 11th and the 14th century, during which Buddhism profoundly marked the thought and government in Vietnam.
The animist traditions so easily incorporated in Buddhism suffered with the establishment of a Confucian inspired moral borrowed from China in the 15th century which would dominate until the 20th century.
The decline of Water Puppets and other performing arts in the 15th century did not stop this tradition from lasting until our days. Approximately 30 active Roi Nuoc companies were listed in the end of the 20th century.
In the lake facing the Thay temple, presumably from the Ly dynasty, 11th to 13th century, there is one of the few theatres or Thuy Dinh— literally meaning Water Temple—which survived throughout the ages, lasting until our days.
The Water Puppets tell us legends and stories from the daily life on the fields of Vietnam. One of the legends, with a particular visual impact, is related to the female figure of a mythical ancestor, Au Co, and usually summons the dance attributed to the Immortals. Eight beautiful fairies with long and delicately articulated arms dance to the sound of music like butterflies.
The daily scenes most frequently performed summon fishermen, farmers, scholars, mandarins and their soldiers and, especially, the symbolic suggestive young man playing a flute while sitting on a buffalo—the domestic animal which dominates the imaginary of Vietnam and every other culture of southeast Asia.