Cheo Opera – A form of stage festivals

For a long time Hat cheo became a familiar form of traditional culture activity for Vietnamese, raising the national spiritual life because of the fervid and profound lyrical. In the treasure of the folklore, Cheo is a form of drama on the stage with charming of national character, with the clever combination of many elements: sing, dance, music, drama carries an original conjugation.

The midland and Northern plain is the cradle of Chèo, from that cradle after many ups and downs of the history of Cheo art developing more and affirmed the significant in the folklore and national culture.

Cheo is usually performed in big festivals across the Northern plain and midland for spring, fall seasons many years ago, many viewer memorized the whole story, or at least some parts, some quotes, praise and critic the acting skills of the actors. Therefore, Chèo was put into a kind of festival, to tell the mass standpoint and the comedy in its acting.

However, there are not many Western festival stages in XV or XVI century with most of funny short dramas. Cheo also has some characters who usually act as clown and many characters “kicked” in to joke about, telling stories or eurhythmy for laughs, mainly they act randomly without any solid story script and stall time for the festival night, however those comedy acts are straggly, not to be relevant to the drama. (Usually is tragedy)

One could say that Cheo has a deep national character of Vietnam, Cheo uses polysyllable words combined with full of lyrical and melodious way of talking. More especially is the combination of Cheo stage from the script, to the character subject with synchronizations between music, sing and dance. Cheo stage in the past was born from the Cheo villages along with dancing and singing festivals. Each time spring comes, people across the land are fretty because the drum’s pinch and the artistes’ singing voices from Cheo villages. People in the past has the quote “nh?t c? d?ng giai di?m vu” that sentence depicts the feature of Cheo art is “dance”, the sophisticated actings of Chèo artistes are all come from this point. With the skillful hands in each gesture, act had shown the “extraordinary skill” of the character, through that we could see the successful of the actor.

From spring to fall in the big festivals across Northern Delta, none is without Cheo. That is why Cheo has the trait of the masses and called a form of stage festivals. The public indulges in Cheo because when coming to the Cheo stage you can enjoy the fun from the satirical and sophisticated laughs. In each play, each episode, each character in Chèo has the comedy come between the tragedies, viewers always value those factors. People from the past usually say “co tich moi nen tro” that sentence affirmed that historical stories are the soul of a play. That is why Cheo was estimated to be a form of national music-drama stage. This fact made a basic characteristic of ancient Cheo art. Not only that Chèo also is a formalized conventional stage, the boasting-exaggerating with the selection traits stood out in relief the characteristics sides of Chèo art-the excellent Cheo pieces were born from that element.

In any time, artistry always proves the similarities with the lifestyle of the society from that time. In the past Cheo has a deep mark of the folk dance, many ceremonies of worshipping in the village festivals of Northern Vietnam. In the development road of Cheo art has a form of parallel compatible of development and creativity. Modern Cheo (modified Cheo) affirmed its potential function with new dramas and human images thanks to the conservation and promoting the traditions of ancient Cheo art, worthy to represent for the national stage art.

There was once a Cheo festival lasted for a whole week, even though it’s still a long time until festival but in every peasant family, they all prepared to participate the festival with their favorite acts. In the ancient Cheo plays usually expose the Feudal commandos and colonists’ oppression to the race. In the plays, the peasant saw the reflection of their life with the positives and negatives, their dreams and concepts about good and bad. Everybody loved and loving more the Chèo art because of its refreshing and humanity, and because it has an original nation.

The Cheo plays – they are stage stories of the fiction poetry, it was featured by dreamy characteristics, clever styling, it has the old traditions of Eastern poetry. Aside from Cheo is an art born from the public peasants, its also used many proverbs and folk songs created by the people through thousand of years.

Basic art in the roles of the actors is dance and through it can express all the flexible harmony of human. The artistes usually say: “dance is the beautiful image of innermost feelings”. Parallel with that, the dances in Cheo are not completely abstract and symbolic, conventional like some other normal art forms because its origin are the life, laboring activity images through the plays in the countryside.

Through many generations, until today the Vietnamese - as well as the people who are living in Vietnam and Vietnamese who are living in foreign countries, always treat the Cheo art like a “colorful shining gem” in the treasure of the folklore.