GEVA THEATRE PRESENTS FURLOUGH’S PARADISE On Stage April 14 – May 10, 2026

Rochester, N.Y. — Geva presents one of Variety’s top Storytellers to Watch in 2025, a.k. payne, whose play Furlough’s Paradise is a multiple award-winning story of kinship, love, and moving through grief. On a three-day furlough for her mother’s funeral, Sade stays with her only cousin. Mina is also on a brief reprieve from her life on the West Coast, and the cousins, who were once so close, come together to try to make sense of childhood memories and their dreams for the future as time ticks toward Sade’s return to prison. “An abolition play or simply a play about cousins” from one of America’s most thrilling new playwrights.

Geva is partnering with the Frederick Douglass Institute and Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester on a series of talkbacks around Furlough’s Paradise and the upcoming Baron Vaughn: Cycle Breaker. Artist Adam Eaton’s exhibit “Black is Beautiful” will be on display in the lobby throughout the shows as well. Geva will also be holding a special workshop with Spiritus Christi Prison Outreach at Jennifer House for previous or current justice involved, identifying women inspired by a.k. payne’s Furlough’s Paradise.

Winner of the 20th annual Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, Furlough’s Paradise premiered at Alliance Theatre in 2024. Then in 2025, it won the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the oldest and largest playwriting prize honoring female and non- binary playwrights who have written English language plays. Opening within weeks of each other, Geva is among three professional regional theatres presenting this play across the country this spring: Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and Curious Theatre Company in Denver, Colorado.

Furlough’s Paradise is directed by Geva’s Resident Director/Associate Producer Jasmine B. Gunter and runs on the Wilson Stage April 14 – May 10, 2026. Tickets are on sale now; visit GevaTheatre.org or call the Box Office at 585-232-4382.

"We’re so delighted to share a.k. payne’s beautiful play with our audiences in the Rochester region, and to extend the conversation beyond the stage through our programs with the Frederick Douglass Institute, artist Adam Eaton, and Jennifer House,” said Artistic Director Elizabeth Williamson.