FURLOUGH'S PARADISE Comes to Yale Rep in April
Performances will run April 24 - May 16, 2026.
Furlough’s Paradise will come to Yale Repertory Theatre next month. Performances will run April 24 - May 16, 2026.
Furlough's Paradise, written by a.k. payne and directed by abigail jean-baptiste, explores the complexity of grief, kinship, and the search for belonging.
The story follows two cousins, Sade, a prisoner on a brief furlough, and Mina, who is leaving an apparently ideal life on the West Coast, as they confront unspoken truths and the challenges of their past.
This lyrical meditation, which won the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, invites audiences into a world where memory and reality intertwine amidst the ticking clock of an impending departure. The play runs from April 24 to May 16 at Yale Repertory Theatre.
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.
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