Born in Canberra, Australia in 1983, Eleanor has been interested in performing since she was very young. Inspired by her musician father and theatre-loving mother, she created her own puppet theatre at the age of ten and gave performances at local schools.

But it was at Radford College in Canberra that her passion for the theatre really took hold, thanks to her inspirational drama teacher, and she appeared in performances of such well-known works as Rozencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead and The Little Shop of Horrors.

From there she moved onto the University of Wollongong to study for a BA in Performance, and it was here that she had her life-changing encounter with Nguyen Dinh Thi, an academic from the Hanoi Institute of Theatre and Film, who was in Wollongong studying for his PhD. As part of his studies he put on a performance called The Land of Bliss, based on a Vietnamese folk tale but combining Vietnamese dance with martial arts and contemporary music, in which Eleanor performed.

Having had her first brush with Vietnamese culture, Eleanor was then fortunate enough to meet Ta Duy Binh, who was in Wollongong to teach meditation to drama students, but who also happened to be a performer of tuong. Watching one of his tuong performances on video, Eleanor was captivated and was delighted to be invited to take part in Binh’s Vietnamese-Australian production, Eleven Parts of Feeling.

Through Binh she met the popular singer Dang Lan, a big star in Vietnam despite having lived in Australia for thirty years. Lan taught Eleanor to sing traditional Vietnamese folk songs, which they subsequently performed at a charity concert.

Touched by the response of the Vietnamese audience to her performance, and fascinated by this new culture to which she had been introduced, Eleanor made the decision to move to Vietnam and devote her time to learning all she could about traditional Vietnamese music.

What happened next? Read Eleanor’s blog to find out!