Otemba – Daring Women is a music theatre production by Theater Adhoc that explores female autonomy, colonial history and the ways in which stories are passed on. Otemba is a Japanese word derived from Dutch, meaning ‘untameable’, and is used to describe independent and rebellious girls and women. At the heart of the production is the seventeenth-century portrait of Cornelia van Nijenrode (1629–1692), a woman of Japanese-Dutch descent who fought for her financial independence. In the performance, she enters into dialogue with Kirana, an Indonesian conservator from present-day Jakarta, and a Scanning Robot powered by artificial intelligence.
The production moves between past and present, East and West, human and machine. Featuring a new composition by Japanese composer Misato Mochizuki, Otemba – Daring Women brings together music, theatre and visual art in a reflection on identity, colonial legacies and the position of women across time.
