Jalan Dato Tahwil Azir (formerly known as Orborne Street)
In 1903, a group of ‘junior officials, clerks, bank shroffs and young miners’ met at the Chinese Union Club at 69 Hale Street to play Cantonese music. In 1905, they formed the Perak Chinese Dramatic Troupe to put up perfomances at the Chinese theatre in Leech Street to aid the Canton Flood Relief Fund.
After an eventful performance at Kuala Lumpur, when one of the performers collapsed and later died of a heart attack, the name Perak Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association was adopted. They moved several times, staying for eight years at 11 Anderson Road. In 1935, they bought the present site and started a building fund with an initial donation from Wu-Lien Teh, a doctor famed as the “Manchurian plague fighter”.
The present three-storey Art-Deco building was opened in 1938. A large marble table inscribed with the names of 221 donors is found on the ground floor. From September 1945 to April 1946, the MPAJA took over the building, throwing regular feasts for their fighters with livestock contributed by the country folk. The British Military Administration then requisitioned the entire building from May 1946 for the NAAFI (Navy Army Air Force Institute) Canteen.
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