Việt Nam: Theatre after Reunification

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OVERVIEW:

Modern and contemporary Vietnamese performing arts

Colonial-era theatre

Theatre 1945-1975

Theatre after Reunification

The experimental theatre movement in the south

Contemporary theatre

Theatre for children and young people

Modern and contemporary music

Modern and contemporary dance

Opera

Theatre after Reunification

Immediately after Reunification in 1975 the country faced severe economic difficulties and consequently comparatively little development took place in the field of modern drama until 1983, when the third National Drama Festival provided a showcase for new work.

Established playwrights of the preceding period who resumed their activities at this time included Xuân Trình (Bạch đàn liễu, 'Eucalyptus Willow' and Mùa hè ở biển, 'Summer at the Seaside'), Tất Đạt (Bài ca Điện Biên, 'Song of Điện Biên', and Đỉnh cao mơ ước, 'Pinnacle of Yearning'), Hoài Giao (Lịch sử và nhân chứng, 'History and Witness'), Thanh Hương (Vàng, 'Gold'), Đào Hồng Cẩm (Ngày và đêm, 'Day and Night' and Tiếng hát, 'The Sound of Singing'), Nguyễn Đình Thi (Nguyễn Trãi ở Đông Quan, 'Nguyễn Trãi in Đông Quan') and Nguyễn Tường Nhẫn (Bác ái, 'Fraternity').

During the 1980s there emerged in the north a number of important new playwrights, including Võ Khắc Nghiêm (b 1942, Nhân danh công lý, 'In the Name of Justice'), Hà Đình Cẩn (b 1945, Sống bằng tên người khác, 'Living under Someone Else's Name'), Ngọc Thụ (Nguyễn Ngọc Thụ, b 1946, Cuộc chia tay lần cuối, 'Final Farewell'), and Nguyễn Khắc Phục (b 1947, Bất hòa với số phận, 'Disharmony With Fate').

However, perhaps the most notable northern playwright of this period was the late Lưu Quang Vũ (1948-1988), who before his untimely death wrote over 50 plays, including such popular works as Tôi và chúng ta (‘We and I’), Nàng Sita ('Miss Sita'), Cô gái đội mũ nồi xám ('The Girl in the Grey Beret'), Nguồn sáng trong đời ('Source of Light in Life'), Đôi dòng sữa mẹ ('Two Streams of Mother's Milk'), Khoảnh khắc và vô tận ('A Matter of Time and Infinity'), Lời thề thứ chín ('The Ninth Vow'), Trái tim trong trắng ('Virgin Heart') and Bệnh sĩ ('A Matter of Face'). In 2000 Vũ's best-loved work, Hồn Trương Ba da hàng thịt ('Trương Ba's Spirit in a Butcher's Body') was showcased by the Việt Nam Drama Company (Nhá hát Kịch Việt Nam) as part of the Việt Nam-America Theatre Exchange (VATE) project, a collaborative venture with Pacific University in Oregon, USA which focused on a bilingual cross-cultural presentation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Directors trained in the former Eastern Bloc continued to dominate the Vietnamese theatre scene during the 1970s and 1980s. During this period first-generation overseas-trained directors from the north such as Đình Quang, Nguyễn Đình Nghi, Dương Ngọc Đức, Dương Viết Bát and Xuân Đàm were joined by younger returnees such as Doãn Hoàng Giang (b 1936), Trần Minh Ngọc (b 1936), Phạm Thị Thành (b 1941) and Ngô Xuân Huyền (b 1942). A number of those trained in the former USSR elected after 1975 to settle in the south, where they proceeded to lay much of the groundwork for today's flourishing Hồ Chí Minh City theatre scene. Perhaps the most important of these was female director Nguyễn Tường Trân, a performer of cải lương and spoken drama who studied in Russia with Professor Maria Ocipovna Kneben, one of Stanislavsky's best students. Trân was highly regarded for her teaching skills which helped each of her students to develop their creative capacity to the full. Other Soviet-trained drama practitioners who moved to the south during this period included Đoàn Bá (b 1937), Bạch Lan (b 1939), Thành Trí (b 1937), Văn Chiêu (b 1927), Huỳnh Nga (b 1932) and Ca Lê Hồng (b 1939).

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