Act of hope : a story of climate change and water puppetry performance along the Red River, Vietnam

Lloyd Williams, A and Vũ, Quỳnh and Lê, Huệ and Jones, Lisa and Võ, Thu Thị and Halstead, Florence and Parsons, Katie J. and Nguyễn, Anh T.Q. and Hackney, Christopher R. and Parsons, Daniel R. (2024) Act of hope : a story of climate change and water puppetry performance along the Red River, Vietnam. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 29 (2). pp. 278-289.

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Abstract

This case study explores a collaboration between young people, researchers and artists which captured stories of how people in the Red River Catchment of Northern Vietnam are responding to climate change, and then used the local art of water puppetry to communicate those stories to a wider audience. The performance evoked the interdependence of the human and physical worlds, showing the impacts of climate change but also people’s adaptiveness. In this way, the piece highlighted how communities along the Red River are practising how to ‘live with hope’, as Gallagher describes it (2022), and how others could do so, too.