Open studio «Từ kịch bản đến sàn diễn: Tôn vinh di sản và lưu trữ của Vũ Đình Long» (From Script to Stage: Honouring the Legacy and Archive of Vu Dinh Long)

   The manuscripts, letters and journals of the man who started modern Vietnamese spoken theatre are on public display in full for the first time — and not for long: once the programme closes, the archive moves into a research room where documents are shown on request. The museum sits on the far bank of the Red River, about twenty minutes from the Old Quarter across Long Bien bridge.

   Vu Dinh Long (Vũ Đình Long, 1896–1960) wrote «Chén thuốc độc» («A Cup of Poison») in 1921, the play treated as the starting point of modern Vietnamese drama, when the stage still rested on traditional forms such as chèo and tuồng. Two years later came «Tòa án lương tâm» («The Court of Conscience»), the first tragedy written by a Vietnamese author. He also founded the Tân Dân publishing house, which produced the most widely read journals of the period: «Tiểu thuyết thứ bảy», «Phổ thông bán nguyệt san» and «Ích hữu». Lan Khai, Ngọc Giao, Vũ Bằng and Nguyễn Công Hoan wrote for them, and Nam Cao, Tô Hoài and Kim Lân reached readers through them.

   What is in the cases:

• — original play manuscripts, including the ones he «Vietnamized», moving foreign plots into a Vietnamese setting
• — personal correspondence, photographs and interviews
• — Tân Dân journals and books, among them a complete set of twenty 1940s issues of «Tiểu thuyết thứ bảy», donated by the artist Bùi Công Khánh and shown on the third floor
• — newspaper clippings, conference papers and recent reissues of the plays

   The programme was curated by the art historian Natalia Kraevskaia, the museum's director, with Goethe-Institut Hanoi as partner. The museum is named after the artist Vu Dan Tan (Vũ Dân Tân, 1946–2009), the playwright's only son and a key figure of Vietnamese contemporary art: in 1990 he and Kraevskaia opened Salon Natasha in their house on Hàng Bông street, the first private art space in Hanoi. The programme also launched the Vu Dinh Long Room, conceived as a «living laboratory» where history, literature and the visual arts meet; over the summer it hosted a seminar on Vu Dinh Long as writer, translator and publisher, and a reading of his letter to Đặng Thai Mai.

   If archives, publishing history or theatre are your thing, this is the rare case where the source itself is in front of you rather than retold. The room is small, an hour or so is enough, and the labels are in Vietnamese and English.

   The museum opens Wednesday to Saturday 10:00–17:00 and Sunday until 19:00, closed Monday and Tuesday. Entry is on the regular museum ticket: students with ID pay half, visitors under 18 and over 60 go free, and children under 14 need an adult with them. Questions go to [email protected].

   More than a century after «A Cup of Poison», you can read 1921 off the original pages.