By a.k. payne
Directed by abigail jean-baptiste
There’s been a drought on their childhood’s road and two cousins come home dry-eyed and grieving. Sade, on a three-day furlough from prison. Mina, departing a strangely idyllic west coast. As all time ticks towards the correctional officer’s arrival, these two wrestle with all they have never said, with the fallibility of memory itself, and with visions of a future they are bound to create. Winner of the prestigious 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a.k. payne’s Furlough’s Paradise is a lyrical meditation on grief, home, kinship, and a utopia yet to be realized.
Special performances
-
Post-Show Discussion
April 25 & 27, 8:00 pm
-
Pre-Performance Discussion
May 6, 2:00 pm
-
Wednesday Matinee
May 6, 2:00 pm
-
Talk Back
May 9, 2:00 pm
-
Audio Description
May 9, 2:00 pm
-
Touch Tour
May 9, 2:00 pm
-
ASL
May 9, 8:00 pm
-
Spanish Captioning
May 15, 8:00 pm
-
Open Captioning
May 16, 2:00 pm
Family reunion night
Friday, May 1
In Furlough’s Paradise, two grieving cousins reunite and envision building a Black, queer utopia. Join us for this performance, followed by a talk back with company members, as we uplift the creation of chosen families and honoring ancestors. Tickets $35 with code FAMILY. All are welcome!
Meet the Artists
Biographies are submitted by the artists and edited for common house style by Yale Rep.
Creative Team
a.k. payne
Playwright
a.k. payne
a.k. payne is a playwright and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their plays love on and engage Black lives and languages beyond the confines of linear time to find/remember stories that might create conditions for our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from David Geffen School of Drama at Yale (formerly known as Yale School of Drama). Their work has been a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award. She is a three-time finalist and the 2025 winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the largest and oldest international award for women+ writers. She is currently a resident artist/fellow with National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency and Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Foundation). They are a grandchild of the Great Migration; a queer & non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the “New Jim Crow;” and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts, and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer, and spacemaker.
abigail jean-baptiste
Director
abigail jean-baptiste
abigail jean-baptiste (Director) is a generative artist born & based in New York City. Guided by questions around Blackness, isolation, and kinship, their storytelling uses nonlinear language and repeatable gestures in a search to build nonsensical ways of being. Recent directing credits include: Chiaroscuro: a light and dark skin comedy by Aishah Rahman (NBT/The Flea), Ti Jean & His Brothers by Derek Walcott (Princeton University), King James by Rajiv Joseph (Northern Stage), and Fefu and Her Friends by María Irene Fornés (Atlantic Theater/NYU). abigail has developed work with: Playwrights Horizons, New Georges, JACK, National Black Theatre, Soho Rep, The Bushwick Starr, Roundabout, Mercury Store, and Northern Stage (BOLD Circle). abigail is a Lilly Award Winner and was named a Powerhouse Women+ Director by Playbill in 2020.