Project Tho Dia is the first work that ToLo Puppet Theatre would produce and create. Having been in development since late 2023, the project comprises a lecture performance, an installation, a plethora of puppet creatures and other shenanigans.
“Thổ địa” (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.
Timeline
World Premiere at Pesta Boneka International Puppetry Festival in Jogjakarta, Indonesia October 2024
Premiered in Vietnam as part of Hanoi Festival of Creative Designs November 2024.
Check out performance schedule here.
"The theatrical experience 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."
Relaxed Performance
ToLo Puppet Theatre has plans to perform the show regularly in Vietnam. Simultaneously, we will also be developing a “relaxed performance” of the show, which we will present once every two weeks or monthly.
Our relaxed performances are geared towards neurodivergent audiences or anyone who might enjoy an inclusive theatrical experience.
On December 1st, 2024 we presented a special preview of this relaxed performance at Goethe-Institut Hanoi to gather feedback from specialists, experts and parents to make necessary adjustments.
The Artists
Linh Valerie Pham (Co-creator/ Director/ Puppet Builder/ Performer) is an experimental puppetry and theater artist. Her works have been showcased at Prague City Gallery (Prague), Goethe Institut (Hanoi), A Space (Hanoi), VCCA (Hanoi), The Factory Contemporary Arts Center (HCM City), IFC (Yogyakarta), Brick Theater (New York), and Center for Performance Research (New York), among others. Linh was a resident artist at Rimbun Dahan (Malaysia), Sowing Seeds (India), a fellow of Arts for Good Singapore, as well as one of the commissioned artists at Biennale Matter of Art 2022 in Czech Republic. Linh is also the founder and artistic director of Mat Tran Ensemble, a performing arts collective with a focus on inclusive and socially-engaged practices.
Tran Kim Ngoc (Co-creator/ Puppet Builder/ Performer) graduated from The Vietnam Circus School in 1991. For almost a decade, he had worked with Vietnam Circus Federation before joining the production of Lang Toi (Mon Village) as one of its original cast members (till 2016), and later Dan Do Band as one of its co-founding members (till 2020). As a performer, juggler, musician, he has toured across Europe and Asia.
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 Tolo Puppet Theater Company in late 2023.
Tran Kim Ngoc (Co-creator/ Puppet Builder/ Performer) graduated from The Vietnam Circus School in 1991. For almost a decade, he had worked with Vietnam Circus Federation before joining the production of Lang Toi (Mon Village) as one of its original cast members (till 2016), and later Dan Do Band as one of its co-founding members (till 2020). As a performer, juggler, musician, he has toured across Europe and Asia.
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 Tolo Puppet Theater Company in late 2023.
Nguyen Khanh Linh (Performer/ Puppet Builder) is a Physics teacher and a movement practitioner at the same time. Linh’s practice focuses on building connections with the space inside the body. Recently, Linh has expanded her explorations into sound and the boundary between the performing artist/performer and the audience. Some of her works: “mơ mận” (rough translation/rt: apricot plum) (Kinergie, 2022), “thinh(g)” (VCCA, 2023), “Nước biển hay nước mắt” (rt: seawater or tear) (Quỳnh Đông, 2023), “Co.the.0” (rt: Body.0) (Project Đẩy Sàn, 2024)
Nguyễn Vũ Hải (Co-creator/ Performer) is a cultural practitioner on the foundation of urban studies and a community facilitator. Hải graduated from Hanoi Architectural University in 2015. He shares a close connection with Hanoi and works with various groups and ethnic communities in Vietnam. His main interest is the connection between people and places. His languages of expression include storytelling, writing and initiated group activities through discussions, study excursions, games and map-making.
La Thanh Ha (Co-creator)spends a lot of time observing and recognizing different aspects of children and childhood. Ha received a Fulbright scholarship in 2020 and graduated from the Master's program in Children and Family Studies at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, USA) in 2022. She has been also known as a children's author since 2018. 2020 was the first time Ha experimented with writing the script for the puppet play "Little Peanut and the Sneeze Theory" with the guidance and assistance of puppet artist Linh Valérie Pham and Mat Tran Ensemble.
Dao Tung (Musician/ Composer) is a multidisciplinary artist whose experiments with sound, installation and video draw heavily from his practice as a composer and sound artist. A graduate of the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Tung has since worked on various experimental performances and theater productions as a visual artist, composer and director, in Vietnam, as well as Korea and the US. One of his most notable theater projects is Erasable (2012), a five-act performance that sought to blur the distinction between art and the quotidian. Tung is also a founding member and organizer of the art event Nổ Cái Bùm (Hue, 2020 and Dalat, 2022), and a co-founder of Open Room and Nest Studio. In 2021, he was chosen as one of the finalists of the prestigious Dogma Prize. Dao Tung’s works have been featured in various individual and group exhibitions, including Edge of the Citadel, Hue, Vietnam, 2022; Video Box, as part of the online SWAB Barcelona Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain, 2020; Henosis, Baik Art Seoul, Seoul, South Korea, 2018; Open Room II, Capa Studio, HCMC, Vietnam, 2016; and howdy cowboy, MoT+++, HCMC, Vietnam, 2015. In 2017, he participated in the Open Studio residency at 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA, USA.
Trần Thảo Miên (Scenographer/ Costume Designer) is a visual artist. Her works intertwine spiritual essence into her soft textured sculptures, embodying reverence for “Vạn vật hữu linh” - Vietnamese beliefs of all beings with souls. Notable exhibitions include Means of Productions (Lunch Hour, NY, United States), Mind & Machines (Vietnamese Women’s Museum, Hanoi & Hai An Gallery, HCMC, 2023), Open Studio (San-Art, HCMC, 2023), A blink in a spacetime (The International Centre for Interdisciplinary Science and Education (ICISE), Quy Nhon, 2022), The Foliage IV (Vincom Center for Contemporary Art, Hanoi, 2022), Sign Chorus (Old Soul, Da Nang, 2022), Citizen Earth (Vietnam Museum of Biology, Hanoi, 2020). She is a Fellow of Mekong Cultural Hub’s Creative Action (2024), also engages in educational programs organised by RMIT University (Vietnam), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore), and takes part in sustainability-related research from Pratt Institute (United States).
Phạm Minh Ánh (Co-creator) has worked in the development field in which she worked with ethnic minority communities in Vietnam to promote cultural diversity rights and tackle discrimination faced by Vietnamese ethnic communities. At the same time, Minh Ánh has an interest in performing arts and theater. She acted in two plays, including Antigone and Common Dialogues, directed by Hà Nguyên Long, the artistic director of XplusX Studio. Minh Ánh co-founded the ACT|READ project in 2024 with Nguyễn Khiếu Anh, aiming to create a reading community that focused on 20th-century Vietnamese dramatic texts. Currently, Minh Ánh practices doing puppetry at Tồ Lô Puppet Theatre and writes theater scripts.
