Life of the Marionettes 6/6

This is one of my spanning-over-ten-year-long Sunday full-page columns published, for a major newspaper, a decade back!

And now. Let's go digital and make it a Sunday column too, read on...

Photographed/Written by Don Schumann

(Originally published in traditional Chinese) 

At the end of the play, a staff member took the bamboo basket wading to salvage those strewn flotsam and jetsam from the performance in the pond. Then, the theater manager at my side proudly introduced a line of the puppetry masters to me and excitingly told me, "one of the female puppet operators is a graduate of university!" 

Outside the theater, golden slanting sun sketches the silhouettes of the crowds of all countries that are in a long queue entering with alacrity. The image of the top-heavy dolls with swift movements of the performance is still hovering in my mind, and the sound every time those bee-waist fairies perfectly shaking the sleeves in unison is still chopping in my ears. That makes me start to pay close attention to those puppets displayed on the "36-Ancient-Streets", the more you look at them the more lovely they become. When you thinking of coming to Vietnam, don't forget to plug this quaint and original artistic performance in your itineraries and see it as another landscape of the world's cultural heritage.

戲終，人潮退盡，一位工作人員拿著竹簍涉水打撈著演出時散落在池塘上的雜物，一旁的戲院經理為我介紹一字排開的演出師傅時頗為自豪地跟我說，其中有一位女木偶操作師還是大學畢業生呢！

走出劇場，黃澄澄的斜陽勾勒著前仆後繼準備入場的各國人潮剪影。頭大身小的玩偶生靈活現的演出模樣仍然在我的腦中盤旋，蜂腰仙女們整齊劃一甩動水袖的神態仍舊劈哩趴啦在我的耳邊作響，讓我開始特別注意三十六古街一路上賣店裡的木偶，越看越可愛。下一次你到越南來，不要忘記把這一齣古樸原味的藝術表演放在行程裡，就把它規劃成世界文化遺產的另一道風景。

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