Developed mainly in the north during the 1920s and 1930s, Vietnamese drama subsequently began to provide a platform for anti-French political sentiment. After 1954 theatre practitioners from North Việt Nam were sent to Eastern Bloc countries such as Russia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria and China to train as theatre directors, reinforcing the relationship with Soviet stagecraft which has remained an important influence on Vietnamese theatre to this day.

After Reunification the Vietnamese theatre scene continued to be dominated by directors trained in the former Eastern Bloc, but during the 1980s the emergence of an experimental theatre movement in Hồ Chí Minh City began to breath fresh life into the genre. By the early 1990s experimental theatre was also starting to take root in the north, but by this time the subsidy mechanism was giving way to the market economy and the need to attract audiences was fast becoming the paramount consideration for theatre companies throughout the country. For this reason in Hà Nội the experimental theatre movement was stillborn, whilst in the southern capital the private mini theatre scene began to proliferate, with programmes focused increasingly on the presentation of short comedy revues and potboilers with star names. Notwithstanding this development, a wave of talented younger playwrights has come to the fore over the past decade.