Vietnamese people, especially those living in rural areas, have not turned their backs on tuong, cheo, and cai luong operas, yet professional theatre companies in these traditional art forms struggle to find audiences. Tran Bang, professor of traditional performing arts, explains the paradox: “We lack qualified artists especially playwrights, who can write decent plays for traditional operas. We are using playwrights trained in Western-style spoken drama to write scripts for traditional operas. Western-style dramas are different from traditional Vietnamese operas in terms of structure, language, character development, and denouement. Therefore, some tuong, cheo, or cai luong operas have lost the identity of their original art form and have become spoken dramas.”
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Traditional opera companies account for two thirds of the country’s theatre companies and once had many scriptwriters. In the 1960s, there were more than twenty cheo dramatists, including famous names such as Tran Huyen Tran, Luu Quang Thuan, Han The Du, Viet Dung, and Tao Mat. However, over the years the number of cheo 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 cheo troupes’ need for new plays.
Traditional opera directors responsible for keeping tuong, cheo, or cai luong, 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 singing, dancing, and acting. Unfortunately, few professional troupes have fulltime directors. Instead, they often use spoken-drama directors to stage traditional operas 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 tuong, cheo, and cai luong 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 Nguyen Hong for tuong, Nguyen Dinh Ham for cheo, and Luong Dong for cai luong 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.
“Since we’re performing amateur operas, it is difficult to attract audiences.” Prof. Tran Bang concluded. “Some recently bastardized tuong, cheo, and cai luong dramas have badly affected the traditional diversity of the arts. We need to train professional scriptwriters, Directors, musicians, and stage designers for each specific kind of traditional opera.” The solution lies in the problem’s roots: the training system. Between 1958 and 1994, the University of Theatre and Cinematography trained only actors and actresses but did not train dramatists or directors for traditional operas. Although it now runs courses for spoken-drama directors and playwrights, the curriculum does not include traditional opera. 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.
