Furlough’s Paradise by a.k. payne

Geffen Playhouse presents the West Coast Premiere of

Furlough’s Paradise

By a.k. payne

Directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden

Cousins Sade and Mina used to be inseparable. Now leading very different lives, they return to their childhood town for the funeral of their mother and aunt. While Sade is on a three-day furlough from prison and Mina experiences a brief reprieve from her career and life on the West Coast, the two try to make sense of grief, home, love, and kinship. As the clock ticks down, the cousins grapple with their conflicting memories of the past and their shared hopes for the future. Poetic and theatrical, Furlough’s Paradise explores family dreams of a utopia yet to be realized.

A.K. PAYNE, Playwright (she/they)

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 M.F.A. in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from fka Yale School of Drama. Their work has been finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and a two-time finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is the current recipient of the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights, and Atlantic Theater Company’s Judith Champion Launch Commission. They are a grandchild of the Great Migration; a queer and 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.

TINASHE KAJESE-BOLDEN, Director

Jennings Hertz Artistic Director, Alliance Theatre. Select directing credits: World premieres of Furlough’s Paradise, Nick’s Flamingo Grill, Ghost (Alliance Theatre); Toni Stone (Milwaukee Rep and Alliance Theatre); School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play (Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre); Native Gardens(Virginia Stage Company); Pipeline (Horizon Theatre Company); Eclipsed (Synchronicity Theatre); among others. As a director and actor, Broadway and off-Broadway credits include Imperial Theatre, Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters, The Classical Theatre of Harlem; regionally at Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Geva Theatre Center, Kirk Douglas Theatre; with recurring TV/Film roles in Strays, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, The Suicide Squad, Marvel’s Hawkeye, CW’s Valor, Dynasty, HBO’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Ava DuVernay’s Cherish the Day, among others. Up next, she is directing The Preacher’s Wife, a new musical with Michael Arden by Tituss Burgess and Azie Dungey and a new opera Forsythe County Is Flooding by Adamma Ebo and Marcus Norris. Directing awards include the Princess Grace Award, Zelda Fichandler Finalist, Suzi Bass Award, and MAP Fund Award. “My mission is the pursuit of what connects our different communities and how we create art that liberates us to imagine a more inclusive future.”