On the shore of Bãi Tiên, a single stage opens into four performance spaces at once - overhead, underwater, on land and inside a shadow-puppet screen - and not a single line is spoken. Rối Mơ (Life Puppets) tells its story through bamboo puppets, light and a live folk orchestra playing all night.

The show reworks Vietnam's traditional water-puppet art, turning the 12 zodiac animals into characters with their own personalities. What's actually in the programme:

Four performance spaces woven together: aerial, underwater, on land, and an animated-puppet zone that pairs motion-capture sensors with hand-made shadow puppets
String puppets shaped like the 12 zodiac animals, controlled through a rig built around a bicycle
Every puppet, instrument and prop made by hand by the theatre's own artisans
Live music from the indigenous-instrument ensemble SeaSoul, playing đàn môi (jaw harp), kèn lá (leaf horn), đàn tính, đàn goong, gongs, and the baranưng and gineng drums

With no dialogue, kids, adults and visitors who don't speak Vietnamese all follow the same emotional thread. If you've only seen water puppetry on a traditional Thủy Đình stage and wonder how different this version really is, Rối Mơ is worth an evening to find out.

Đó Theatre takes its shape from "cái đó", the bamboo fish trap every Vietnamese household knows, built into a 2,500m² building right on the Bãi Tiên coastline inside Libera Nha Trang, facing Cô Tiên mountain. The hall seats 536, split into Dragon, Tiger and Zodiac tiers by distance from the stage, with separate rates for children and seniors.

Director Nguyễn Nhất Lý comes from a Vietnamese-Cham-French family and studied music at Paris VIII. With his team, he has staged À Ố Show, Làng Tôi, Teh Dar and Palao - productions that have toured commercially at hundreds of theatres worldwide.

Rối Mơ runs at 6pm on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays; the weekly line-up can shift, so it's worth checking the booking calendar before you go.

For anything beyond the basics, the theatre takes questions at sales@vge.org.vn.

An evening at Đó Theatre is a chance to see Vietnamese folk art take a shape you won't have seen before.

Puppet Theaters

Show «Rối Mơ – Life Puppets»

Puppet Theaters events in Nha Trang