Boria: From Passion Play to Malay-Jawi Peranakan Parody

With a history dating several thousand years, from the ta'ziyeh Persian passion play to Indian and Malayan street celebrations during the month of Muharram, the boria in Penang has survived critics' trials to become a vibrant Malay-Jawi Peranakan parody theatre - a modern-day vaudeville, combining skits, dance, music and song, to reflect on the vices and virtues of urban Muslim society.

Its narrative, lyrics, choreography and costumes express comic representations of colonial and postcolonial life while fostering unity among urban Muslim communities, caught at the crossroads between tradition and modernity. Secular in its symbolic representations but spiritual in essence, it is the only known surviving Malay-Jawi Peranakan parody theatre in Malaysia.