Chèo Theatrical Art - Typical personalities of character

Some Vietnamese cultural researchers believe "Stereotyping -  The characters in Chèo Theatrical Art are often conventional and standardized."

What personalities are typical of characters in Chèo Theatrical Art ?

Unlike the characters in spoken drama, their personalities and psychology don’t change during the play. They are drunken men, deaf teachers, wealthy men, prime ministers, students, flirtatious women, and buffoons. Chèos’ minor characters are so interchangeable among the plays that most of these parts have no names. However, over time some of these characters – such as from connection and anonymity to become strong personalities.

Buffoons play an important role in Chèo plays because satire is a characteristic of the genre, as it is on the traditional stages of other Southeast Asian countries. Buffoons amuse audiences, especially in sad stories. According to Shakespearean tradition, life is a mixture of happiness and sadness. In Chèo Theatrical Art, buffoons and funny scenes are an opportunity for ordinary people to lash out at the vice of a feudal society, its king, mandarins, village officials, and the rich. Chèo s’ buffoons were free to ridicule just as the fools did in the royal palaces of European kings. For example, Chu Mai Than has a hilarious scene in which the first wife of local official Tuan Ty gets into a jealous quarrel with the second wife.

There are two types of satiric characters in Chèo Theatrical Art. The main one is the buffoon, including He moi (buffoon dancing with a stick), who is often a servant. The second type may appear in various roles, such as fortune-teller, medium, drunkard, or village chief. Sometimes these characters provoke laughter that is not directly related to the play, since the buffoon (or the fortune-teller or drunkard, etc.) may comment on characters and incidents in society at large.

Satire in Chèo Theatrical Art is always linked to romance, another significant feature. Chèo is romantic because it expresses peoples’ individual emotions and feelings and reflects the common concerns of all people: their concern for love (as expressed by the characters Thi Mau and Chau Long), for friendship (represented by Luu Binh and Duong Le), and for compassion (as found in Thi Kinh, the Goddess of Mercy). Characters, especially women, struggle with fate, making Chèo similar in some ways to Greek tragedy, except for the humor and happy ending.

Source: Chèo - Popular theatre of Vietnam culture