In 2008, he became a member of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette (UNIMA). With these items, he has taken water puppetry to many places in and outside of Vietnam. It does not occupy much space for performances and also saves water. Liem’s new stage includes a small semi-circular pool, which is is decorated with artificial banyan trees, bamboo trees and the puppets, of course. And right now, Liem’s younger son has been showing his early talent by following his father for the puppets.
Ngai also helped create the mobile water puppetry stage. His father, the famous puppeteer Phan Van Ngai, made chu Teu (a humorous farmer) puppet, which is displayed in France’s Louvre Museum. Liem was born in a family with seven generations that have been preserving water puppetry in the northern province of Vietnam. Before performing his amazing work, Liem introduced us some things about his family and history of Water puppety Art, while his wife was inviting us some traditional sweets and black tea of Vietnam. The 4-story house is surrounded by puppets and many of them have been hand made by Liem. The zigzag way that leaded to his house was also very interesting to see how locals’ live in this area of the city. We came to visit Liem’s house on a very special day – Mid Autumn or “Tet Trung thu” which is a holiday for children in Asia, and water puppet used to be a favor gift for kids years ago in Hanoi. Puppeteer Phan Thanh Liem has become the vanguard in preserving and promoting this folk art after opening a stage for water puppetry performances in his house. This way of traditional storytelling has of course been reaplced by TV, but along with traditional theaters like Tuong and Cheo, water puppetry has raised its role on the traditional stages that needs to be preserved. During flooding of the monsoon season in between crops, farmers introduced water puppets to entertain themselves and their families with plays about famous events in Vietnamese history, such as battles or things that had happened in that village. Water puppetry is an unique art that originated in Vietnam’s wet rice civilization, when farmers from the Red River Delta near Hanoi created water puppets or as its known here in Vietnam, mua roi nuoc.
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