HANOI - On a summer afternoon in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, the audience watches colorful puppets in the form of a farmer, fish, fox or dragon plowing a rice field, swimming, climbing a tree or puffing fire and smoke on the surface of water with no sign of handlers or equipment.

While many traditional performing arts are facing extinction, water puppetry, which dates back nearly a millennium, has become increasingly well-supported both domestically and abroad as a distinctive art form in Vietnam.

The surface of a pool of water is the performance area, which serves not only to hide the puppeteers and the puppets' strings but also to create a reflective stage providing natural amplification for the singing puppeteers accompanied by percussion music and firecrackers.