Eleanor Clapham, the Australian- Vietnamese Performer

Eleanor, the Australian born performer is making waves in Vietnam as the first non-Vietnamese to become a professional performer in the traditional arts. Her mastery of two forms 'Tuong' and 'Cheo'and her current studying of the third form 'Cai Long' has made her one of the most famous Westerners in Vietnam. She has been swamped by media coverage from Newspapers, Magazines to Television Interviews, which should make her performance at the Opera House on the 22 December a sell out show. It all began two years ago when preparing to graduate from the University of Wollongong, Australia. Despaired by the lack of potential employment for performers in her own country, she began to search for something extra special to set her out of the crowd. By luck her path crossed with Vietnamese performers living in Australia who introduced her to an art form that she instantly fell in love with; a complex theatre form that involves acting singing and dancing.

Now entering into her second year of dedicated training, in Hanoi, Vietnam, her dreams are coming true her accomplishments are putting her in high demand to perform not just in Vietnam but also throughout the world. In the mist of all of the media coverage Eleanor is now searching for support in her ventures. To many she is seen as the embodyment of a true merge of cultures bewteen the east and west, therefore any Company currently doing buisness in Vietnam attaching it's name to her would receive a huge amount of advertising. To find out information about becoming a sponsor, contact; Email- emlc95@hotmail.com Phone - (84) 0914799460

To find some more information about Eleanor visit these sites

The New Hanoi Vietnam Bridge Vietnam Women

Studying in Vietnam

Everyone that I told about my plans to go to Vietnam to study the traditional arts just smiled politely.'
The first major challenge Eleanor was faced with was the language; in order to learn the art form she had to know Vietnamese. So two months before the intended trip she bought a 'Teach Yourself Vietnamese' kit and 'studied like crazy' she was already fluent in
French and found that her previous
study of language helped a lot.

When she arrived in Vietnam she was competent in basic Vietnamese; she could ask where the toilet was and what the time was etc. She had decided that the best way to learn the language and understand the culture was to live with a Vietnamese family. Her friend Thi had arranged her to stay with a couple who were both musical artists, this would be her home for the next five months.

'I can remember feeling confident with the language when I stepped off the plane, but the moment I tried to speak to the locals I realised I was in big trouble. If I had studied hard to learn Vietnamese in Australia then I was ten times more so once I arrived in Vietnam. It was a case of absolute necessity, which is the best motivation you can find.'

Eleanor spend the next five months devoting all of her energy into learning the art form. She took one lesson per day, the teacher would come to her house and teach for two hours. The rest of the day would be spend practicing alone for hours at a time. There are three forms of Vietnamese theatre; Tuong, Cheo and Cai luong. Eleanor chose to study Tuong because this was the art form that her Vietnamerse role model back in Australia, Binh had studied. It is Vietnam's oldest and most difficult art form, involving acting, singing and dancing. Tuong has strong influences from the Chinese opera and was originally performed for royalty.

'To be honest I've never worked so hard in my life. I really poured all of myself into learning the art form and learning the language. I would get annoyed if people invited me to go out because all I wanted to do was study.'


During five months, Eleanor studying the following pieces;

Ho Nguyet Co Hoa Cao (Ho Nguyet Co Becomes a Fox)

Ho Nguyet Co is beautiful woman who was born as a fox but possess a magical pearl which allows her to become a human. For a thousand years she has studied and trained to be a powerful human. One day when returning home from battle she comes across a hansome man named Thiet Giao. He belongs to the enemy side, but she does not fight him and instead flirts and reveals the secret of her pearl to him. Thiet Giao seduces her and as they are making love he clutches the pearl from her and runs off with it. And so begins the piece that Eleanor performes; the struggle that Ho Nghuyet Co goes through as she gradually returns to her original state as a fox. The famous line from this piece is 'A thousand years wasted in one moment of foolishness'.

'This was the first piece that I studied so I found it to be difficult. First of all , my Vietnamese was very basic. But more so was the fact that this was the first time I'd been exposed to this artform. The music did not seem to follow any pattern to me, it seems so unpredictable and difficult to remember. I had previously sung Italian opera and found that to be difficult but that was nothing compared to the complexity of Tuong singing. I did start of with an awful fear that perhaps my voice wasn't strong enough to hold the music. But my teachers were so incouraging, and I worked very, very hard.'

Ngu Bien (Five Disguises)

Xuan Tram sneaks into the palace and assasinates the man that killed her husband. Then to escape persecution she disguises herself five times; as a dumb child, a crazy woman, and old man, a beggar and a blind fotune teller.

'When I first began learning this piece I was amazed at

the talent of my teacher; Ms Man Thu. She was quite elderly but still much more limber than myself, and she could hold the characters so skilfully. Later I learned that I was in fact being taught by Vietnam's most famous and aclaimed Tuong artist, which would be the equivelant of being taught by Joan Sutherland in Australia.'

My Teachers

This piece involved changing from one charcter from the next very quickly. The characters are stylized and very physical. Each character has it's own song.

Xuan Dao Cat Thit (Xuan Dao Cuts her Flesh

Xuan Dao fighting against the storm

Xuan Dao is left alone with her mother in law while her husband is taking his exams. During a huge flood Xuan Dao is unable to leave to house and her mother is dying from starvation. Desperate, Xuan Dao decides to cut her own flesh to feed her mother. The loss of blood causes Xuan Dao to become weak to the point of near death. But the local god sees her suffering and comes down to earth to bring her back to life.

'An incredibly emotional piece. It was a skill that I'd never been taught before to balance the stylised movements with truthfully embodying the struggle of the character. For instance to scream in pain as the knife slices her flesh, but not to break out of the strict dance movements.'

Du Hong

Du Hong, similar to Ho Nguyet Co was born a chicken, but has trained for thousands of years to become a powerful human. Standing on the top of a cloud Du hong witnesses a battle and decides to descend from the sky to asist the reitous party. This was a piece originally only done by male actors but they made an exception in my case. Eleanor found it to be by far the most difficult piece.

'When I performed it I finished the piece, walked off stage, and collapsed.'

In this piece the costume is very elebrate. It involves the face to be painted in the traditional style with colours black white and red.

Aside from these pieces Eleanor also studied weapons movement which included sword, bow and arrow, flag and fighting.

Eleanor returned home from Vietnam to Australia in December, now determined to come back to Vietnam as soon as possible. During her time living in her Vietnamese homestay she had been exposed to another of Vietnam's opera forms; she had been living with Nguyen Thanh Tuyet, a previously famous actor in the Cheo artform. She was now teaching at the University of Stage and cinemea Hanoi and Eleanor had many oportunities to see her students perform.

'Compared with Tuong, Cheo is much more Vietnamese. It is lighter and more graceful (Tuong is more powerful and skillful). The music is absolultely magical, involving a lot of vocal range with notes quickly going from high to low. And the dancing is quite baletic. I couldn't resist, I fell so deaply in love with this artform that I knew Vietnam had not yet finished with me.'

For a more deatailed account of Eleanor's experience learing Tuong vist- Learning Tuong

A Quest for something Different

How it all began

Half way through a degree at the University of Wollongong. Eleanor was faced with a tough future as an aspiring artist. 'Every day of my training our teachers would tell us that more than half of us would never survive in the entertainment industry. When I met graduates of drama schools they all seemed to be working in cafes and waiting on a call from their agent. The people who were succeeding all had something extra special about them that set them out of the crowd. I knew that I needed to find that special something'

For a long time Eleanor planned on becoming an opera singer but came to realise that it didn't suit her, so continued her search.

By luck, Eleanor's path crossed with four very special people, all of them were Vietnamese...

The first was a young academic named Thi (Nguyen Dinh Thi) from the Hanoi Institute of Theatre and Film. He came to Australia to study for his PHD in theatre at Eleanor's University. During his study he also co-directed 'The Land of Bliss', based on a Vietnamese folk tale 'Thu Thuc gap tien' (Thu Thuc meets a fairy), a production that combined both Australian and Vietnam theatrical modes. It involved martial arts, Vietnamese and modern dance and singing in Vietnamese. In this production Eleanor played multiple roles including a warrior, a fairy and a river spirit.

'Up until that point I had never enjoyed performing so much! It was a lively, beautiful, creative show and it was a sell out which is quite peculiar for a University production. I loved the poetry of Vietnamese performance and I also was able to draw on my previous years of martial arts training to choreograph the fighting scenes.'

The influence this show had on Eleanor had started a fire burning inside of her, but there were yet more influence to come...

'The first time I met Binh (Ta Duy Binh) I could tell that he was something special. Quite short, but extremely agile, with an entensity that fills the stage'

He came to Wollongong University to teach the acting students Chi Cung, a Vietnamese form of meditation. Eleanor later learned that he had trained as a mime actor in Hanoi many years ago and had recently been back to Hanoi to learn an ancient form of the theatre. Intrigued, she went to the presentation of his video which showed him performing the ancient art form Tuong.

'As I watched the performance my heart started racing. He performed a piece called ' ' (someone crosses the river). It involved a character walking along the river carrying a basket, he suddenly hears cries of distress at he know that in order to help the one in distress in most cross the river. So he uses the basket as a boat to cross. A very simply story, but performed with such wonderful physicality. I remember thinking to myself that if only I could learn this I would have a skill that would equipt me to compete 100 times stronger than I did at the time.'

Noticing Eleanor's enthusiasm for the Vietnamese arts, Binh invited her to join him at Citymoon Theatre Company to perform in the production 'Eleven Parts of Feeling'. This was another production that combined the Vietnamese and Western modes, and another hugely successful show. It was there that Eleanor met an other big influence... Dang Lan.

Dang Lan had been in Australia for over 30 years now. But back in Saigon, she was a star, enjoying one of the top selling albums of her time. In Sydney Australia she was well known amongst the Vietnamese community and continued to perform regularly. When Eleanor and Dang Lan met, they quickly formed a very close friendship.

'We often joke that we must have been sisters in a past life because we are so alike.'

Dang Lan taught Eleanor a number of Vietnamese folk songs including 'Qua Cau Gio Bay' (Crossing the Bridge Gone with the With) and Cay Chuc Xinh (The Beautiful Bamboo Tree). And Eleanor made her debut singing Vietnamese folksongs for Vietnamese audience at a fundraising night for Koto.

'I remember being so nervous singing in Vietnamese for Vietnamese audiences, I didn't know how they would react to a westerner singing their traditional songs. But the result was breath taking; after singing the first line of the song, the entire audience began to applaud. And when I finished, I received a standing ovation. People were coming up to me after the performance, thanking me for taking an interest in their culture.'

It was a combination of all these events that set a fire going. There was something special about Vietnamese art forms and culture, the more she discovered the more she wanted to explore. And so she made the decision, she was going to Vietnam and she was going to study the traditional arts. She had a strong feel which she intended to embrace that... Vietnam had something great in store for her. But studying in Vietnam would present all sorts of new challenges...

To find out more about Eleanor's Experience Learing Tuong visit Learning Tuong