sân khấu

Etymology
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The modern meaning might be due to the bows often seen with the curtain call at the end of a play or performance. If so, this word most likely first acquired the meaning "stage" after European performance arts started to become familiar to Vietnamese speakers, as Vietnamese performance arts traditionally likely did not feature this kind of respectful bowing at the end of a performance.

Alternatively, as recorded in Petit dictionnaire français-annamite (1885) by Trương Vĩnh Ký, the French word was defined as "chỗ thân ngoài nơi  làm tuồng; thân ngoài sân khấu", where sân khấu can be interpreted as "where people do a dramatic introduction to a  play", so it referred to the prelude and not the ending bow. It is difficult to pin-point whether the word here was used for the Vietnamese performance art ( is an introduction/prelude in  and ) or was just a stand-in for theatre as an art form in general; it was used to translate the word  in the same book.

Noun

 * 1)  a royal court, where mandarins would prostrate themselves in front of the reigning monarch
 * 2) stage (for a performance)
 * 1) stage (for a performance)