This programme is from one of the spate of plays that were a part of the revival of Peranakan theatre in the 1950s and 1960s, after the Japanese Occupation. Peranakan theatre from the 1950s featured all-male casts, with female impersonators filling in women’s roles, most notably William Tan and Francis Hogan. The plays were put on by amateurs, usually to raise funds for charitable organizations. Nyai Dasima is an old Indonesian play about the beautiful Nyai Dasima, the wife of a Batavian man who is enticed by witchcraft to leave her husband and is eventually murdered.
