Ca Dao Hồn Việt (2026)
Ca dao are Vietnam’s oral folk verses, made by ordinary people and passed from voice to voice for centuries, often sung while working. They were never meant to be only read or watched. In this immersive and multisensory performance, audiences are carried back to the village world they grew out of, where you pound, sift and roll with your own hands, and finish each verse together.
Commissioned Playwright: Linh Pham
The Challenge
For Gen Z, ca dao has become lines to memorise before an exam.
Vietnam’s centuries-old oral folk poetry has faded from lived experience into school curriculum, stripped of the labor, heartbreak and collective memory that first gave it life.
The Question
How do you make someone feel a poem they’ve always been told to understand?
The Solution
Meet the verse as sensation first, before the words are even spoken.
A 60-minute multisensory immersive performance that transforms ca dao from literature into a communal survival mechanism. Set in a late 19th-century village, audiences are cast as historical laborers to experience the verses as sensation first, the heavy rhythm of the mortar and the scent of harvest, before the words are even spoken.
IN THE PRESS
NGÀY NAY · 23 MAY 2026 · BY TRƯƠNG THƯ · IN VIETNAMESE
“Khi người trẻ kể chuyện ca dao bằng ngôn ngữ nghệ thuật đương đại”
The article follows Ngọc Trời, the interactive play Linh wrote for the Ca Dao Hồn Việt project, where audiences sift rice, prepare betel and finish unfinished verses with the characters.
Ngày Nay is the online magazine of the Vietnam Union of UNESCO Associations.