'The Ceremony' Masterfully Explores Trauma Across Generations

Review of The Ceremony, which ran at the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre at Boston University.

The Ceremony is a masterpiece. The sixth play in playwright Mfoniso Udofia’s nine-play cycle about three generations of a Nigerian-American family, The Ceremony features a wedding between a Nepali-American woman (Lumanti Shrestha, played by Mahima Saigal) and a Nigerian-American man (Ekong Ufot, played by Kadahj Bennett). Although the couple is deeply in love, their families and family histories complicate their upcoming wedding.

Directed by Kevin R. Free, The Ceremony is a tender story that intertwines Nigerian and Nepali cultural traditions. Through brilliant acting, complex writing, and a thoughtful production by CHUANG Stage, The Ceremony brings alive the pains and pleasures of what immigrant children inherit from their parents. It also highlights what they choose to bring forward and leave behind. Emerging from the genius of first-generation Nigerian-American storyteller and educator Mfoniso Udofia, this play is by a child of immigrants for the children of immigrants.

Weddings carry the joy of celebration and the risk of deepening long-standing family fractures. The Ceremony is raw and real, opening questions of how to live with ancestral pains, especially traumas passed down from fathers to their children. Both fathers are absent leading up to the wedding, but when Lumanti’s father has a change of heart, her fiancé Ekong attempts to reconcile with his long-estranged father to fulfill a wedding ritual that requires an inheritance from father to son. A new life together brings Lumanti and Ekong the burden and opportunity to build new traditions together amidst unresolved traumas in each of their birth families.

Ekong’s father’s behavior is often selfish and hurtful to his children. Looming large around his character’s context, but only briefly mentioned, is the haunting of a civil war the father never talks about - likely the Biafran War (1967-1970.) As do many immigrant families fleeing difficult and at times unspeakable pasts, the Ufot family does not openly discuss parental traumas. Yet his father’s trauma is Ekong’s inheritance, although he is seeking one of a different kind. Intergenerational trauma is subtly yet vividly presented in The Ceremony as a recurrent, dialectical exchange between parent and child - a birthright wound passed down, sometimes scarring over but often reopened in mundane domestic conflicts and abuses.

As a child of Chinese immigrants, I was deeply touched by The Ceremony. At times it brought me to tears. For children with generational, inherited pains, The Ceremony is the play we have been waiting for. Inside us – both parents and children – there is often a crying, wounded child, which this performance beautifully represented. Ekong, who has been scarred by his father, admires people who are just “good.” Being good contains a rich double meaning of both being a good person, which his fiancé Lumanti assures him he is, and being good with oneself: the ability to live within one’s own skin, living with lightness, being OK. Both meanings are mutually reinforcing – can we grow up as whole, capable adults who can love and be good to others, if we are not good with and within ourselves? An impending marriage – a major rite of passage in many cultures – opens these questions.

'The Ceremony' Photo courtesy of Ken Yotsukura

The Ceremony forces the audience to contend with the question: Where shall we store our ancestral pain? Even when we try to firmly dislocate it into the past, often ancestral wounding lives on within the body, and reproduces itself in our traditions, rituals, and habits – from disassociating into The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to our sibling dynamics. Being psychically wounded by our historical and emotional inheritances raises questions of how much agency we have in deciding what we inherit. Or, if in the same way we cannot choose the shape of our eyes and noses, perhaps we cannot choose the ways in which our parents have infused us with life and pain.

A talented cast made The Ceremony pulsate with emotional richness and vigor. In addition to Saigal and Bennet, Cheryl. D Singleton as Abasiama Ufot, Salma Qarnain as Amma, Natalya Rathnam as Auntie, Regine Vital as Adiaha Ufot, Natalie Jacobs as Toyoima Ufot, and Adrian Roberts as Nsikan Disciple Robets shone on stage and created a rich, entangled family world. Further, the performance made dynamic use of the black box space, with lots of interesting dimensionality and moments of closeness to the audience.

Boston's Asian American professional non-profit theatre company CHUANG Stage produced The Ceremony, in partnership with Boston University School of Theatre and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Their presentation of The Ceremony was impressive. The space outside the theater was intentionally curated, decorated with warm-colored cloths and festive wedding ceremony décor. A space invited viewers to light a candle and leave a note reflecting on ancestral inheritances. Performances on different nights were made lively by CHUANG Stage’s pre- and post-show events, which included momo tastings, chai preparation, and singing. CHUANG Stage’s signature community engagement event The Reception was carefully researched and grounded in Newari and Nigerian culture, featuring local Black and South Asian-owned restaurants, outdoor welcome dance performances, post-show music sets by local BIPOC musicians, and conversations with artists and community leaders about the Ufot cycle. Thanks to CHUANG Stage’s creativity and care, the world-making of Udofia’s The Ceremony spilled out beyond the walls of the black box theater to space and time outside of it. It was a delight to see such exceptional thought put into the audience experience and engagement with theater outside of the performance itself. The production of The Ceremony was truly Asian excellence at work.

The Ceremony ran from September 11 - October 5, 2025 at the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre at Boston University. The world premiere of The Ceremony was commissioned and developed by The Huntington.

Upcoming productions of the nine-play Ufot cycle include Lifted (7 of 9) in March 2026, In Old Age (8 of 9) in June 2026; and Adia and Clora Snatch Joy (9 of 9) in Fall 2026.

Lifted (7 of 9) • March 2026

By Mfoniso Udofia, Directed by Josiah Davis

Produced by: Wellesley Repertory Theatre

What does it mean to come from a culture that believes you cannot steal what is already yours? Brilliant scholar Toyoima Ufot’s lonely path in academia was built directly on her father Disciple’s work. After she is accused of plagiarism, she travels to Nigeria, a journey that both unleashes her history and heals.

In Old Age (8 of 9) • June 2026

By Mfoniso Udofia. Directed by Dawn M. Simmons

Produced by: ArtsEmerson and Front Porch Arts Collective

Can we continue to evolve in our final years? Abasiama still lives in the same house after her husband’s death. Soon she learns the true nature of love with an unlikely new partner, the church-going carpenter Azell, and her life takes a new turn. A clean house and a healed soul frees Abasiama to embark on the last love voyage of her life.

Adia and Clora Snatch Joy (9 of 9) • Fall 2026

A folk opera

By Mfoniso Udofia

Produced by: Boston Lyric Opera and The Huntington

The Huntington Theatre

Part of Embrace Boston’s Everyone 250 Festival

Daughter Adiaha travels to South Carolina in search of her mother’s partner, Azell. Instead, she finds Clora – and a strangely familiar house in Gullah South. Sparks fly as they fight, make messes, and work to understand their history. Together, Adiaha and Clora imagine new ways forward, guided by spirit women who push them into their destiny