‘GẠO’ (Rice), the viscerally moving puppetry performance composed and performed by Mat Tran Ensemble, will be premiered in Saigon, Vietnam after its latest participation in Pesta Boneka, the international puppet theatre in Indonesia.
Inspired by the Great Vietnamese Famine in 1945, ‘GẠO’ is the forth full-length puppetry performance composed by Trang Linh, Mắt Trần Ensemble’s founder, which explores the nature of human under severe conditions. ‘GẠO’ was originally developed from a short theatre piece commissioned by Drama of Works and premiered at Dixon Place, New York in a puppet festival called Punch: Kamikaze, in which the participating artists are invited to compose new works in response to the aftermath of World War II. Through puppetry, body movement, and live music, the audience is invited to immerse in another spacio-temporal dimensions, in which they would cross the boundaries of genre, form, context and ages.
Differing from the definition of puppetry conventionally understood in Vietnam, Mat Tran Ensemble’s practice was influenced yet creatively transformed many different puppetry traditions such as Bunraku, a traditional Japanese puppet theatre, or Wangya (Indonesian shadow puppetry), also mixing with other elements such as lighting, installation, video projection. To Mat Tran, puppetry is the art of storytelling through breathing and material, not caricature. The puppets are regarded as the extension of the puppeteers, but somehow, they can even make magic that is impossible for humans.
Before the performance, the audience can also join a puppet-making and storytelling workshop with puppets made from cement paper. The workshop is suitable for all ages.
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Schedule:
▪️2-5pm: Puppet making and storytelling workshop
▪️7-8.30pm: Performance
(We have a restaurant and cafe on site for you to enjoy breaks between 2 sections.)
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Ticket fee:
- Workshop: 300,000VND/person
- Performance: 450,000VND/person
- Combo (including performance and workshop): 700,000VNĐ/person
- Register and payment methods .
*Mat Tran Ensemble (literal translation: Naked Eye) is a performing arts collective, founded with the hopes of instilling a new belief that arts is for everyone. The Theatre’s mission is to pursue a vision of inclusive arts by creating performances that can be enjoyed without the constraints of class, space or language. All of their activities are designed to break down barriers, to bring people together and generate conversations within the community. Mat Tran and its founder/artistic director, Linh Valerie Pham, are grant recipients of Singapore International Foundation (SIF), Japan Foundation, Prince Claus Foundation, and FRIDA – The Young Feminist Fund.