Sensitive issue subject of play

Sensitive issue subject of play

SINGAPORE (AP): A play staged in Singapore this weekend raised
the sensitive topic of a Dutch girl's forced separation from
Malay Muslim foster parents which sparked deadly race riots in
the city-state 50 years ago.

Racial and religious themes are rarely aired in the arts in
Singapore, a tightly controlled Asian country with a complex
mixture of ethnic groups.

The play My Name is Nadra, played Thursday through Sunday, is
based on the story of Maria Hertogh, whose Dutch parents left her
in the care of a Malay woman in Indonesia when World War II
Japanese forces overran the former Dutch colony in 1942.

Hertogh, who was five years old at the time, was raised as a
Muslim with the name Nadra and married a Malay man at age 13,
said the play's writer Edwin Roberts.

Despite the extreme sensitivity of the issue in Singapore,
Roberts said the country's authorities - known for routine
censorship of the arts - raised no objections to the play.