How can something grow without physically expanding?

A folding screen, when closed, appears flat and almost nondescript. But with each panel opening and each shift in light, angle, and position, what once seemed singular becomes multiple. It is the unfolding, not enlargement, that transforms.

Some spaces behave this way. The moment one scene concludes, and another begins, the room seems to grow – not because the walls move, but because its roles multiply and its boundaries blur. Rest overlaps with preparation. Storage shares space with performance. Movement meets stillness. A constant flow between revelation and what is yet to be revealed.

An unassuming façade on busy Nguyen Sieu Street leads to a room that feels too small to hold anything. Once inside, a continuous tension between containment and expansion, between density and focus, emerges. The space does not grow larger, yet it never feels finished.

Gánh Cải Lương Thiên Lý was preparing for the evening show. It was late afternoon; the last few lights of the day were spilling through a single skylight. The room was slowly receding into darkness, but inside, pigments, sequins, lacquer, silk – a festival of color and light – were just beginning to come alive.

Everything formed a collage, fragments arranged in careful disorder – light against shadow, fabric against chipped paint, memory against improvisation.

In the far left corner, a small makeup area was beaming with light. Everyone was painstakingly drawing every detail. Faces appeared only through the mirror – some fully painted, some mid-transformation, some still bare. Depending on where one stood, a different version of the same person came into view. Chaos mixed with focus; a theatre within the theatre.

Above, a middle-aged man rested peacefully in the small loft, the curtain left open, as if he was used to all the noises and glances below. Costumes were stored around him in the dark, yet sequins and metallic details still caught the light – faint glimmers sharp enough to tease the eye.

Beside the grooming area, a stage barely five square meters. Curtains slid in and out to suggest new scenes, creating depth where almost none existed. Light came from everywhere – an overhead pouring over the back wall, a stage light blazing from the front, footlights glowing below. Too much attention on such a small footprint – excessive exposure, heightened fragility. Anxiety surged. The platform bore more weight than its size allowed. Even as an outsider standing offstage, the exposure felt inescapable. No matter where you stood, the spotlight had already found you.

Everything bore the marks of time. The blue walls flaked and yellowed. Frames crowded the room – Chinese-style peacock paintings, certificates, modernist portraits, thank-you letters, awards, images of cải lương performers and past productions. Rusted lockers, shelves, and chairs betrayed the fatigue of long use. Everything competed for a place within the space’s stream of memory, yet somehow coexisted in harmony.

Then the room shifted again once the performance began.

I had always known what cải lương was, but its sentimentality, intensity, and melodrama kept me at a distance. For most of my life, I used “cải lương” almost as an adjective for something cheesy. I never paid attention to it. But as I sat with the music, recitation, and dialogue, I felt a strong sense of nostalgia. Why would something I ignored feel so familiar?

Perhaps it recalls childhood evenings, when cable television was the primary source of entertainment in our house – when channels were few and programs were watched simply because they were there. I would land on Truyền Hình Vĩnh Long broadcasting a cải lương performance and quickly switch away before my dad asked me to switch back. The lingering sound quietly settled into my memory, unnoticed at the time.

As the space unfolded, so did my memory. Here I was, sitting at a live cải lương performance. The sound I once switched away from now surrounds me.

I thought of Song Lang, a 2018 musical drama directed by Leon Lê, co-founder of Gánh Cải Lương Thiên Lý. In one scene, Dũng, a debt collector, tells Linh Phụng, a cải lương performer, that at least his job does not pretend. Cải lương sings of loyalty and virtue, but in real life, those values fall apart. To Dũng, the stage can only feel like a beautiful lie.

Sitting in that small, blindingly lit room, I wondered if that was true. Perhaps Dũng was right. But certainly an art form like cải lương does not survive on pretense alone. It requires devotion. The performers here do not escape it when the curtain falls. They live inside and with it – sequins, moral recitations, and fatigue all at once.

Near the entrance, an old framed poster of Song Lang fades at the edges, dust collecting on the glass. The signage reading “Gánh Cải Lương Thiên Lý” glows just above it. Everything is bright and loud, yet nothing feels monumental on its own. Just a name, a room, a few square meters of stage.

And yet, here, worlds unfold.

The space never expands. The walls remain close, the light uncomfortably bright, the air thick with sound. But something continues to open, like a folding screen – panel after panel – in memory, in gesture, in sound, in repetition.

Perhaps growth is not about scale.

Perhaps it is about what refuses to disappear.

Words by Long Nguyễn