Description

Target Audience: 6+ years old

Duration: 40 minutes

Project Tho Dia is the first work that ToLô Puppet Theatre Company would produce and create. Having been in development since late 2023, the project combines a lecture performance, an installation with a plethora of puppets and other shenanigans to tell stories from past to present.

“Tho dia” (or Tudi/ Tudigong) refers a low-ranked tutelary deity in charge of a specific location and its inhabitants. The original show fuses contemporary puppetry and lecture performance to examine the CITY as a living entity whose increasingly mercurial body challenges our instincts as its inhabitants to take root, to belong. The show weaves together two narratives: one is a fantasy puppet adventure set in a futuristic city; the other is a lecture performance featuring a Hanoian architect turned cultural worker from the present day.

Synopsis

A Boy is stuck with a Monster on his back. The pair learns to co-exist as they wander the Grey City, looking for something that the Boy has forgotten. They run into an Old Man, who is awaiting his final days. The trio become companions and embark on a journey to help the Old Man reunite with the Wishing Tree from his younger days. As the journey goes on and the past of the Grey City unravels, questions about the identities of the Boy, the Monster, and the Old Man arise.

Born and raised in Hanoi, Nguyen Vu Hai used to be an architect. Now, he is making a living by designing walking tours around the city, uniting his bond to the city with his interests in urban research and peoples. Hai presents his research and personal, intimate stories on the changes that took place around the village where he was born, raised and still lives to this day.

An Unidentified God/dess appears intermittently. In the dark eternity, s/he is lost, struggling to find a way out.

Credit:

Created by: Linh Valerie Pham, Tran Kim Ngoc, Nguyen Vu Hai, La Thanh Ha, Nguyen Khanh Linh, Huyen M Hoang, Pham Minh Anh.

Performed by: Linh Valerie Pham, Tran Kim Ngoc, Nguyen Vu Hai, Nguyen Khanh Linh, Dao Tung. 

Set and Costumes Design by: Tran Thao Mien.

Sound and Music by: Dao Tung.

Artist Profile

In 2020, Linh and Ngoc started working together in a team of co-creators and directors for a show called Life Puppets. After two years, the show premiered in April 2023 and has been running regularly at Do theatre, Nha Trang. Afterwards, the duo founded ToLô Puppet Theatre Company in late 2023.

ToLô Puppet Theatre Company is an independent theatre company based in Hanoi, Vietnam who:

- produce original puppet shows and theatrical performances.

- research and archive traditional puppetry practices and more.

- welcome experiments and expansion on what puppetry art and object theatre can do.

As a company, their works have been showcased at Treasure Hill Artist Village, Puppetry Art Center of Taipei and Lize Puppet Art Colony, Taiwan.

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