A Distinct Society

Shifting National Lines in “A Distinct Society”

Weston Theater Company
Walker Farm Theater
705 Main Street, Weston, VT
Ran August 20-31, 2025

Be careful about drawing a line in the sand. Because sands have a way of shifting.

In Kareem Fahmy’s “A Distinct Society,” recently closed in Weston, VT, but likely soon to enjoy quite an afterlife in regional and university theatres, the line in the sand is the border between the United States and Canada. Specifically, it is that bit of the border that runs through the center of the Haskell Free Library (an actual public library) in Derby Line, the actual Vermont town that straddles the border. (The Canadian side is Stanstead, Quebec.) Set Designer Alexander Woodward makes the line through the library’s reading room askew, to reinforce the fact that the painted line through the town, which we don’t see, was, at least in the play, was purportedly executed by a crew who were drunk as they worked. The locale is real; the story and characters are Fahmy’s engaging, enraging, and endearing creations. Sidebar: in case you missed it, President Trump closed access to the library to Canadians in March (2025). When US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited the library earlier this year, she stood on the US side of the indoor border and called it the United States; she stepped to the Canadian side and called it the fifty-first state.

Daniel Clark as Declan. Photo by Rob Aft.

“A Distinct Society” is set in 2018, with Trump’s ban on Muslims entering the United States in full force. Fahmy’s fictional Iranian heart surgeon, Peyman Gilani (played with sympathy and charm by Barzin Akhavan), arranges a series of ill-fated meetings with his twenty-something daughter, the outspoken, feisty, and generally adorable Shirin (Fatemeh Mahraban) at the library, typically being sure to sit on the Canadian side of the reading room. Among other things, Shirin is in the United States on a student visa. The Quebecoise head librarian, Manon Desjardins (Polly Lee, with a sense of independence, vulnerability, and a spot-on accent) facilitates the duo’s get-togethers but also enforces US Border Patrol rules that prohibit, among other things, visits lasting longer than five minutes and bringing food offerings that might be consumed on the premises. So much for Peyman’s home cooking. Also on the scene is an African American Border Patrol officer, Bruce Laird (Jason Bowen, balancing sexiness with naïveté), who never imagined that, after growing up in Detroit, he would find rural Northern Vermont inviting, and who also never imagined falling for a slightly older woman, Manon, nor studying both French and opera to keep up with her. The final character, Declan (the versatile, agile, and fast-talking Daniel Clark), is a fifteen-year-old high schooler who was born in Ireland, moved with his sheep geneticist parents to rural Quebec, and who now endures the torment of his classmates, who tease him as an outsider, despite the fact that he has become fluent in French, in accordance with Quebec law for immigrants. He cuts school and travels to the library so he can sit on the American side and enjoy the graphic novels that Manon is willing to order at his request. The Green Lantern is his favorite.

Barzon Akhavan and Fatemeh Mehraban as Peyman and Shirin. Photro by Rob Aft.

Fahmy’s always-engaging play—it’s philosophical, funny, occasionally melodramatic, timely, and it refuses to take sides, or, really, to let its characters stick with rigid, long-held opinions—benefits from his dexterity as a director. Manon’s sore back, revealed as she stretches in the first scene, comes to comic fruition when she finally bonds with Bruce, who dips her skillfully as they dance, only to have her collapse to the floor, writhing in pain. Two-handers, which many scenes are, escape stasis, as characters move around the stage, both because of restlessness and uncertainty, but also as a metaphor for the uselessness of boundaries when curiosity, generosity, and love are involved.

Jason Bowen and Polly Lee as Bruce and Manon. Photo by Rob Aft.

If Declan is a little too interested in superheroes and fighting; if Manon has squandered chances for love in her regret about her parents’ standoff concerning Quebecois separatism; if Bruce is overly zealous both in pursuit of Manon and in proving himself a worthy enforcer of US law; and if Shirin has waited too long to tell her father that she has dropped out of medical school to become a trained chef (CIA here means Culinary Institute of America, not, as Peyman fears, the other one); none of them is either unlikeable or bargaining in bad faith. When Bruce unholsters his gun, the result is not quite what anyone would have expected. Declan fails the test for his driver’s license, but he steps up to the plate to redeem himself with his classmates in a book report based on his obsession with his favorite graphic novel hero. Not flinching, and with the audience in the place of his classmates, he reads from the notebook in which he has been writing for the duration of the play. If we are to have light in place of darkness, we need to recognize that white light is the product/intersection of all colors of light. Green Lantern sheds good light, but Declan’s invented character White Lantern declares himself the Orange of Avarice and the Indigo of Compassion, the yellow of Fear, the Green of Will, and the violet of Enduring Love. No one color can do it alone.

Good and evil mix to produce humanity. And humanity is what this play celebrates, even when it finds itself navigating seemingly fixed identities, arbitrary borders, insensitive laws, flawed behavior, fear of others, hubris, and resentment, all in the desire for a better life and world.