Nguyển Cát Ngạc, pen name Nam Xương (1905-1958) was a popular Vietnamese playwright in the 1930s. He is remembered as the author of the comedy Ổng Tây An Nam (The French Annamite, Monsieur Franco-Annamite) in 1931. [1] This play satirized francophile Vietnamese, [2] [3] through the character of Len, a young Vietnamese completely Frenchified after his studies in France. [4] [5] [6]
The Vietnamese people or the Kinh people, are an ethnic group originating from present-day northern Vietnam. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population at the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other ethnic groups in Vietnam. The earliest recorded name for the ancient Vietnamese people appears as Lạc.
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
In a modern sense, comedy refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, or any other medium of entertainment. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old." A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.
