Weston’s ‘A Distinct Society’ questions physical, emotional borders

The Haskell Free Library in Derby Line, Vt., and Stanstead, Quebec plays a vital role in this story of separation and unity. Photo by Hubert Schriebl.

By Lorien Strange
©2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Upon hearing about a play set in a library that straddles the U.S.-Canadian border, you might expect a whimsical, heartfelt story nestled among dusty bookshelves in a grand reading room. Something you might read about in a book, sure, but not a place you could actually visit.

While A Distinct Society, being performed through Sunday, Aug. 31 at Weston Theater’s Walker Farm, is a work of fiction, it doesn’t just rely on its unique setting at the Haskell Free Library in Derby Line and Stanstead, Quebec, to feel viscerally true.

Iranian father Peyman Gilani, played by Barzin Akhavan, and his daughter Shiri, Fatemeh Mehraban, use the Haskell Free Library to meet despite the 2018 Muslim ban. Photo by Rob Aft.

Stranded on opposite sides of the border by the Trump administration’s 2018 Muslim ban (Executive Orders 13769 and 13780), Iranian father Peyman Gilani (Barzin Akhavan) and his exhausted but passionate daughter Shiri (Fatemeh Mehraban) jump at the opportunity to meet in the library.

When their seemingly simple wish to be reunited entangles them in a moral, emotional and legal quandary with three Haskell regulars, they quickly find themselves navigating more boundaries than just the one marked by scuffed-up black tape on the floor.

These emotional and cultural borderlands are familiar territory for the play’s award-winning writer and director Kareem Fahmy, who grew up in a Middle Eastern family in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and is now based in New York City. Struck by real-life stories of now-prohibited international family reunions at the library, Fahmy used the concept to explore what it means to be (and not to be) American, Canadian, Middle Eastern and Québécois.

Faced with the scars of prejudice in and around them, the characters are vivid and life-sized, each trying and failing to understand the others as they continually challenge each other.

Broadway, TV, film and Shakespearean veteran Barzin Akhavan thoughtfully portrays gentle-by-nature Peyman, whose mission to care for his daughter makes him willing to put everyone in a tough position. His daughter’s fierce determination to prove herself worthy of her father’s love could be easily overplayed, but Fatemeh Mehraban channels the frustration of the injustices Shirin faces to shine through her medical school burnout and show her passion for life and human connection.

Their reunion tugs at the heart and is something of a gut punch for French-Canadian librarian Manon Desjardins (Polly Lee), who finds her agency in the library’s governance rapidly deteriorating as she and the charismatic Customs and Border Patrol officer assigned to the library alternatingly flirt and argue. Officer Bruce Laird (Jason Bowen), for his part, sees his confidence in his role as an enforcer make him overestimate his ability to know where to draw the line.

Polly Lee’s French-Canadian librarian Manon Desjardins and Customs and Border Patrol Officer Bruce Laird, played by Jason Bowen, flirt and argue. Photo by Rob Aft.

And everyone struggles to manage teenager Declan Sheehan, played by Daniel Clark. Sheehan is a  Northern Ireland immigrant to Canada whose eagerness to prove he can contend with complexity lands him in a thicker web than the adults suspect that his graphic novels have prepared him for.

Each character is endearing and sometimes appalling in their actions, but there are no clear good guys or bad guys. Officer Laird could easily be cast as the villain, but actor Jason Bowen brilliantly shows him to be just as commendable as he is reprehensible at times. It’s a stage full of humans, thoroughly enjoying singing opera to themselves while cleaning, struggling to pronounce each others’ names and enthusiastically bubbling about superheroes and home cooking.

Against the rich emotional backdrop of the story, the set, lighting and costume design work in tandem to maintain the feel of a real place. Except for Officer Laird, who’s in uniform for most scenes, costume designer Herin Kaputkin dresses the cast in comfortable clothes you might see on a subway in New York City or Montreal: ribbed sweaters, floral dresses and skirts, plaid caps and jeans. Manon’s tango dress is the other fun standout, its playful red ruffles revealing her legs and  capturing the hesitant but unfeigned joy of her character, just like her dance moves, as choreographed by Weston staple Felicity Stiverson.

Declan Sheehan, played by Daniel Clark, is eager to prove he can contend with life’s complexity. Photo by Rob Aft.

Scenic designer Alexander Woodward drew inspiration from the interior of the real Haskell Free Library for the set, including the lovely stained glass panels in the windows. But Woodward has cleverly rearranged the room to capture the circulation desk, the kids’ corner, the border line and the entrances to the library, the interior stairwell and the private offices all on one stage.

Most importantly, it’s a space that looks used. The floor is a bit dusty, the reading chair and quaintly-patterned sofa in opposite corners of the room sport rumpled fabric, and the oak paneling and the cornflower blue textured wallpaper instantly bring to mind the musty smell of a well-kept community space. And of course, the bookshelves, with titles in both English and French.

Brilliantly designed by Minjoo Kim, the lighting seems to exist in the same real-surreal space as the emotions of the cast, building the world outside the room of the library we can see. Headlights from a car cast against the interior wall. Shadows from the window frame in the wall somewhere amidst the audience. And warm light flooding through the doorway of another room illuminating the anxiety and warmth in the dark of the final scenes.

Thanks to dialect coach Barbara Rubin, the cast’s dialogue sounds just as genuine as it feels. Shirin’s slight accent intensifies when she’s talking about and to her father, Declan and Officer Laird differ in their pronunciation of Iran, and Manon naturally slips from her “keh-beck-kwah accent to slightly exaggerated English vowels. And intimacy director Jaclyn Pageau helps the cast’s closest scenes feel just as authentic as the rest of their performance.

The music also builds from this atmosphere, with Sound Designer Mark Van Hare using Manon’s rendition of the Habanera theme from the opera Carmen at the beginning of the play to weave the emotional complexities of each scene transition together.

Performed during a second Trump administration and his second U.S. ban on citizens of several Muslim-majority countries, and the mass deportation of immigrants from South America, almost exactly 30 years after the 1995 referendum that nearly saw Quebec’s secession, Weston’s A Distinct Society is a timely production of a timeless commentary on immigration, nationalism and humanity.

It’s a show not to be missed — and selling out quickly.


A Distinct Society runs at Walker Farm, 705 Main St. in Weston, through Sunday, Aug. 31. The show runs 1 hour and 35 minutes with no intermission.

Matinees are 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, with 7:30 p.m. performances Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Tickets prices are $25 (students) to $74 and tickets are selling briskly.  To purchase tickets click here or call the Box Office at 802-824-5288.

Following Thursday’s and Sunday’s performances, there will be a Post-Show Talk.

Filed Under: Community and Arts LifeIn the ArtsReviews

About the Author: Lorien Strange is grateful to be spending her senior year of high school as a freelance journalist. Not a Vermonter by birth but certainly one in spirit, she’s excited to give back to these southern Vermont communities through her reporting. She is especially interested in the state’s education system and chickens.

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