Expectations from the audience's return
In the spoken drama segment, Hong Van's stage attracted attention with "Old Tension" and maintained "Absolutely Troubled Compatibility", maintaining a stable rhythm of performance.
Besides entertainment drama, historical and revolutionary works such as "Sword and Mother", "If You Can Live" create an impression, while "Hao Hoa Hotel" continues to attract Cai Luong audiences.
Meanwhile, Truong Hung Minh Theater introduces the plays "Double Harmony", "Then 30 Years Later", "Sister Hang's Daughter", "Cold Storm No. 44", "Blood Silk", combining many genres from family to horror. Idecaf Drama Theater maintains its appeal with "Le Chi Vien" and entertainment plays such as "Luong Son Ba - Chuc Anh Dai Foreign Tale", "Tam Cam Great War", "Village of Thieves". Small Stage Drama Theater (5B) also participates with a series of plays "Jealousy", "Dandelion", "Thung Bat Village", "Papa, I'm Marrying" and even children's plays such as "Noise in the Fairy Forest", "Secret of the Circus and the Magic Horse".
This diversity shows the clear efforts of the units in innovating content and reaching many audiences. Not only focusing on one genre of drama, Ho Chi Minh City's theater is gradually forming a rich ecosystem, from political theory, history to entertainment, and children. This balance has contributed to creating attraction for this year's holiday season.
Challenges to retain audiences
However, the story does not stop at holidays. The biggest challenge for Ho Chi Minh City theater is still how to maintain its heat when entering the normal stage. The reality of many years shows that after peak periods, the number of audiences often decreases sharply, causing many theaters to fall into a state of stagnation.
Even attractive plays like "Old Men" or "Late Night Singing Troupe" find it difficult to maintain a stable viewership if they are not constantly renewed or creating media effects. This reflects the increasing competition from other types of entertainment such as cinema, online platforms and social networks - where audiences can access content faster and more conveniently.
Another challenge is building a young audience. Although entertainment plays have somewhat attracted young audiences, turning them into regular audiences of the theater is still a long way to go.
The problem of script quality and creative human resources also poses an urgent requirement. If plays only stop at a safe and easy-to-watch level without breakthroughs, theater will find it difficult to create long-term attraction. Meanwhile, investing in new scripts, training young directors and screenwriters still needs more time and resources.
From an operating perspective, many socialized theaters still face great cost pressure, while revenue mainly depends on ticket sales. Units must balance between artistic elements and capital recovery capacity, sometimes limiting creativity.
From the above issues, it can be seen that Ho Chi Minh City's theater is facing an important period of transformation. Positive signals from the holiday season - through a series of plays and audience attraction - are the basis for expectation. However, to maintain the recovery momentum, a combination of content innovation, enhanced experience and long-term development strategy is needed.
After all, theater still has its own advantages: Directness, vivid emotions and interaction that no other form can replace. If these values are well exploited, and at the same time solve the problem of retaining audiences, Ho Chi Minh City's theater can completely affirm its position in urban cultural life, not only during holidays but also on weekdays.
