Shakespeare Lives in Vietnam: revisiting paradigms of modern Asian theatre through a student production of Romeo and Juliet

This paper considers the existing literature on Shakespeare and Vietnam in English, suggesting factors that contribute to its paucity and highlighting a tendency, especially on the part of non-Vietnamese authors like myself, to invoke Vietnam in writing about Shakespeare only in relation to military conflict. It establishes that such gaps in the literature are not for want of a Shakespearean theatre scene in Vietnam. It builds on previous research which found that universities in Asia (and to some extent, schools) have played a significant role over three centuries not only in training the next generation of theatre artists and the next generation of audiences, but also as an archive of historic theatre materials’ (Wetmore, Liu and Mee, 267). Finally, it suggests that using rehearsal and performance techniques in the classroom could have pedagogic benefits, beyond the teaching of Shakespeare, for Vietnamese higher education.