Water puppet play «Huyền sử Yết Kiêu»

   On the water, wooden puppets replay a legend from the Trần era: bamboo rafts drift out, a battle banner goes up, and the hero Yết Kiêu steps into his fight. The Rồng Phương Nam puppet troupe brings the water puppetry of the northern delta to a water stage in the middle of Saigon.

   The production was built from scratch: through 2024 the Nhà hát Nghệ thuật Phương Nam theatre put out tenders one after another for carving the puppets, making the props, building the set and composing an original score for «Yết Kiêu». The puppets, the scenery and the music you hear were all made for this story rather than borrowed from another programme.

   Who makes the show
The Rồng Phương Nam puppet troupe of Nhà hát Nghệ thuật Phương Nam
Puppets, props and scenery commissioned specifically for this production
An original score written for the production
Seven performances in the season, all of them on Sunday afternoons, running to the end of October

   It is the kind of afternoon that is easy to bring the whole family to: children watch the puppets, adults watch the craft. Visitors from abroad tend to pick water puppetry too, because most of the storytelling sits in how the figures move across the water.

   Water puppetry is a village craft of the northern delta, performed in front of a thủy đình water pavilion, and it is still treated as living heritage: after the recent mergers Hải Phòng alone counts four water puppet guilds on the national list of intangible cultural heritage, according to Báo Hải Phòng. Keeping that craft alive through a regular season in the south is something few places manage.

   One note on finding it: the water stage sits inside the grounds of Bảo tàng Lịch sử Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, so follow the museum gate, and there is car parking on the grounds.

   One Sunday afternoon beside a small pool is enough for children to remember it and for adults to see why the craft survives.