Chèo Theatrical Art and the Future development (Part 1)

Why is Chèo Theatrical Art currently in crisis?

Vietnamese people ,especially those living in rural areas, have not turned their backs on Tuồng, Chèo, or Cải lương operas, yet professional theatre and companies in these traditional art forms struggle to find audiences. Tran Bang, a profession of traditional performing arts, explains the paradox: “We lack qualified artists, especially playwrights, who can write decent plays for traditional operas. We are using play wrights trained in Western-style spoken drama to write scripts for traditional operas. Western-style spoken dramas to dreams are different from traditional Vietnamese operas in terms of structure, languages, character development and denouement. Therefore, some Tuồng, Chèo, or Cải lương operas have lost the identity of their original art from and have become spoken dramas.”

Traditional opera companies account for two-thirds of the country’s theatre companies and once had many scriptwriters. In 1960s, there were more than twenty Chèo dramatists, including famous names such as Trần Huyền Trân, Lưu Quang Thuận, Hàn Thế Du, Việt Dung, and Tào Mạt. However, over the years, the number of Chèo dramatists has declined while fewer and fewer young dramatists have emerged to fill the gap. The few remaining professional dramatists cannot meet the twenty professional Chèo troupes’ need for new plays.

Traditional opera directors responsible for keeping Tuồng, Chèo, or Cải lương operas true to their origins are also growing scarcer. Directors must understand the characteristics of each kind of opera as well as how properly to select and combine the skills of signing, dancing, and acting.

Unfortunately, few professional troupes have full-time directors. Instead, they often use spoken-drama directors to stage traditional opera and then credit the directors as “art instructors” in their advertising campaigns. Thanks to their extensive knowledge, some of these directors have assisted troupes to produce decent shows; however, many have bastardized the traditional art.

Most Tuồng, Chèo, and Cải lương musicians and stage designers are amateurs. In the 1970s, each type of traditional opera had its own full-time musicians and stage designers. Professional stage designers such as Nguyễn Hồng for tuồng, Nguyễn Đình Hàm for Chèo, and Lương Đồng for Cải lương tried to maintain the unique style of their art form. Nowadays, this uniqueness is fading as each stage designer imposes his or her personal style on the traditional operas. The same is happening with the music, since writers often use modern popular songs in their classical operas.

The solution lies in the problem’s roots: trained only actors and actresses but did not train dramatists or directors for traditional operas.

Ironically, graduates of spoken drama schools often direct traditional operas. Luckily the country has recently recognized this drawback and is trying to address the imbalance in the performing arts training system.