Sameena Zehra

Sameena Zehra’s Homicidal Pacifist – Dust Off Your Guillotines is a one-hour, rage-filled, self-professed ‘unhinged rant’ premiering as part of the NZ International Comedy Festival. A charismatic and engaging performer, Zehra is at her strongest and most breathtaking when she intersperses her own stories and experiences through the show, which explores New Zealand and world politics, racism, humanity, and war, primarily the Gaza war.  

What starts as assured stand-up morphs into what feels more like a TED Talk than a comedy show. I mean this with no disrespect, and believe Homicidal Pacifist – Dust Off Your Guillotines has the potential to open up the conversation on what comedy can and should do. When it comes to the big stuff – and there is no bigger stuff than war, than senseless slaughter – I think comedy’s power lies in its ability to break down our barriers with laughter. In a past interview, comedian Pax Assadi put it to me that when someone’s mouth falls open to laugh, that’s when you can slip your message in. It’s like once those hard exterior walls come down, the interior softens. This show is anything but a softening. Let’s call it a reckoning!

From the ‘mmm’s murmuring through the gallery, it seems most of the audience are receptive to Zehra’s message and onboard with the political takes at play. While every person on this Earth can stand to learn and grow, if we already agree and no Wellingtonian here is likely to change their mind, does that make us the target audience or the opposite?

I do note that our laughter, at first exuberant, bubbles over into a subdued simmer by the second half – as if we know how we feel but not what to do about it or how to react. We’ve been softened by the gags, the brilliant personal anecdotes, the hilarious audience asides, the silly little songs (shout out to Spider-Man’s hand parkour) of the well-crafted first half. But as the second half builds in intensity to boiling point, it feels like there’s nowhere left to go. It’s a lot to take in, to experience, individually and collectively. Despite the show ending with a brief call to action and a moment of respite in the shape of a great joke (the gay thread is *chef’s kiss), I’m left with a sort of hopelessness. That, of course, may well be the point.