Braiding Peonies

The Lantern, St. John’s NL | November 28-30, 2025

Written by Sobia Shaheen Shaikh
Directed by Santiago Guzmán

Reviewed by Rhea Rollman

 

Braiding Peonies opens as powerfully as it ends. In this immersive theatre experience written by Sobia Shaikh and directed by Santiago Guzmán, there is no curtain to rise. The audience, seated in a u-shape around the set, has already been lulled into serenity by gentle music and ambient lighting by the time the actors come on stage. They are unprepared for the rapid affective turn about to take place, a jolt made all the more powerful by the lack of dialogue in the opening scene. 

The audience witnesses three young people joyfully traipsing down the road; a combination of audio effects (car horns, revving engines, cellphones), lighting effects and the visual expressions of actors communicate the racist attack on the three. One woman videotapes it; another character falls to the ground, clutching their head. The juxtaposition of sound, lighting and stop-motion choreography by the actors renders the scene chilling and powerful. The only words spoken are those at the end: the mother of one of the children answers the phone as the play fades into the next scene. 

Following this dramatic, wordless opening it is the dialogue that gathers steam and takes centre stage. The play runs nearly two hours without intermission, but doesn’t lag, and by the end it’s barely noticeable that two hours have passed. The key action centres around Samreen (Mehzabin Chowdhur), the young non-binary trans youth who was hit by a stone in the racist attack, and their mother Sadiqa (Selina Asgar). Samreen struggles with the aftermath of the attack, but also with how it changes the way they are treated by family, friends and community. This occurs against the backdrop of all the other struggles of young adulthood: friends, school, gender identity, sexuality. For her part, Sadiqa is determined to achieve justice for her child. She berates the police for their failure to do a better job of finding her child’s attackers, protests the minister of justice, goes to the media; all without the consent of her child. This occurs against her own complex personal history as an immigrant who has rejected the hijab and mosque and yearns for her child to appreciate the secular lifestyle she offers. She proudly embraces her child’s gender identity, yet even this act of acceptance seems to be more about her than her child. For Samreen, asserting themself comes in the form of navigating their own complex journey through identity. They are more interested in spending time with their friends at the mosque and asserting a queer presence there than in rejecting it the way their mother did. Actions have consequences: in the wake of Sadiqa’s very public quest for justice, Samreen’s father (Nikhilesh Paliath) winds up on a no-fly list, CSIS becomes involved and Samreen’s friends (Nicole Obiodiaka, Leahdawn Helena) launch an abolitionist anti-racist group at the mosque (to Sadiqa’s dismay and ire). 

The characters Shaikh has crafted in the play are dauntingly complex, and yet far more real for that complexity. The actors carry off the challenging roles with skill; Chowdhur deftly weaves between brashly confident queer youth and angst-ridden teen screaming at their mother. The moral dilemma of the play subtly shifts as it progresses. What first appears to be an exposé about racism in contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador progresses into a debate over harm, repair, and abolitionist politics. Along the way it touches on a broad range of topics: gender identity, self-harm, anti-Black racism, Indigenous sovereignty, and the inflexibility of institutional systems. Yet never in a cursory way. Shaikh, who is a social work professor in addition to community organizer and creative worker, offers a thoughtful and compelling exploration of each of these themes, and how they weave together to form the complex problems of modern identity and community. Intersectionality is difficult to present in a time-constrained stage performance, but Braiding Peonies offers one of the best depictions of this complexity modern theatre has to offer. 

The play’s success also owes much to its talented director Santiago Guzmán. Guzmán offered audiences a brief talk and tour following the play, a glimpse behind the scenes at the play’s unorthodox setting and presentation. 

“How do we bring theatre to the community?” he asked, sharing one of the driving missions of his work. Braiding Peonies was presented not at one of the city’s usual theatrical venues but at The Lantern, a local community centre. The large meeting hall where it was performed in fact has a stage at the far end, but Guzmán deliberately opted not to use it, instead hiding it behind a creatively designed backstage barrier of draped curtains and cloth. The set was delineated by this barrier and a collection of carpets on the floor. Audience seating was laid out in what is referred to as a ‘thrust,’ a u-shape around the set. In this way the audience is more intimately implicated in the action. The effect is like looking in through someone’s living room window. Yet the juxtaposition of carpets, curtains, and draped fabrics—coupled with a compelling soundtrack, audio effects, and lighting—all created a far more enveloping sense of atmosphere than a typical theatrical stage. 

Guzmán’s team did a lot with very little in terms of resources: the primary stage props were a table and five chairs. Yet these were skilfully manipulated to create a broad range of scenes: the table served double-duty as a bed; the chairs as seating in a mosque, living room, or car as necessary.

“Theatre is magic,” smiles Guzmán as he explains the set design. “If we can make the audience believe that these two characters sitting on two chairs are in a car, we can do anything.”

The ambience was further accentuated by the use of steel poles draped in fabric, with remote-controlled LED lights at their base. These not only permitted the simulation of a range of indoor and outdoor conditions, but rendered possible the beautifully complex conclusion in which characters weave draping from the set’s four corners together while Samreen recites the titular poem inspired by their mother’s memory of braiding peonies.

There are no easy answers to any of the moral, cultural and political problems the play poses. Yet in posing them, it calls on the audience to reflect on  how we are implicated in them in our contemporary daily life. The characters struggle to navigate a complex world, as do we all. 

“All we can do is commit to do better,” reflects Samreen’s wise friend and mentor Lalla Zainab toward the end of the play. Braiding Peonies offers a beautiful, heartwrenching, inspiring call to do just that.