» Performance An Interview with Little Peanut and the multimedia storytelling workshop

– with Mắt Trần Ensemble

The performance:

An Interview with Little Peanut is the latest chapter of Dearest Little Peanut – a series of puppet shows created by Mắt Trần Ensemble, with blue scarf-donning Little Peanut as its protagonist. While the first chapter centers on her dreams and the innocent world in which she lives, the second – Little Peanut and the Sneeze Theory – encounters Little Peanut in a more fragile and volatile universe, where she must confront difficult questions about life, death, and saying goodbye.

In this latest chapter, we meet Little Peanut at various stages in her life: as baby Peanut, middle-aged Peanut, and an older Peanut in her final moments. All these versions of Peanut are trying to answer questions from the Interviewer. All are dreaming, searching, breathing, living together, and living alone.

The workshop:

In this multimedia storytelling workshop focusing on movement, puppetry, and the visual elements of a performance, the students of EMASI school learned how to use and create materials from the play itself: the puppet characters, the camera equipment and blackbox, as well as images, objects, and texts. They also got the chance to control the puppets and role play as Little Peanut, the Interviewer, or the Dream-Maker!

—

Following Nguyen Art Foundation’s main theme in 2023 – Compassion and Community – aside from hosting talks, workshops and tours that revolve around this topic, we are also inviting individuals and collectives that have created, or are part of a community that is passionate about specific art forms. To reflect how community engagement is constantly evolving, we wish to highlight diverse practices that do not shy away from experimentation, and that take an alternative approach to familiar media. The individuals and collectives invited here are inspired by, but also empower their respective communities – a give-and-take that is essential for sustainable community work.

This series of community takeovers was commissioned by Thái Hà for No more, not yet, an exhibition organized by Nguyen Art Foundation.