How would it feel to just be? To fully belong to your body, to be free from the way the world sees and punishes you, to return to a childlike innocence before you knew death, to sit on a couch with someone you’ve loved your entire life and — just be? This is the dream at the heart of “Furlough’s Paradise” by a. k. payne, a deeply emotional new play running at Geva Theatre through May 10.
Geva is one of the first regional theaters to produce this play, which has already received much acclaim. In 2024, “Furlough’s Paradise” won the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, an award known to jumpstart playwriting careers. (Previous winner Tarell Alvin McCraney wrote the play that inspired the Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.”) The following year, “Furlough’s Paradise” won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, another prestigious honor that has been received by the likes of Lynn Nottage and Caryl Churchill.
This two-hander centers two Black queer cousins who grew up on the same street but whose lives have taken very different paths. Mina (Cloteal L. Horne) got an Ivy League education and now works for Google, commuting to San Francisco from the home in L.A. she shares with her actress girlfriend. Mina’s cousin, Sade (Shunté Lofton), who gave birth young to a daughter she couldn’t keep, is now incarcerated in a high-security prison where she teaches algebra and helps run the library. The entire play spans three days, while Sade is out on furlough to attend her mother’s funeral.
Grief can make the world feel off-kilter. Sade and Mina, each mourning the loss of a parent, spend the three days in Mina’s apartment. The rooms may feel familiar, but something’s wrong. The set design by Regina Garcia feels lived in, including a kitchen, a couch for Sade to sleep on, a box of records, a bookcase of the father’s figurines and a couch. The floor, however, is slanted. The angled ceiling gives the illusion of the apartment shrinking into itself. There are no walls. Instead, two doors open to an abyss, which changes colors throughout the show, through lighting design by Seojung Jang.
This blend of realism and abstraction permeates the play. Some moments feel like real life, literally: the cousins sit and watch “The Proud Family” while eating Cookie Crisp cereal on the couch. And some moments feel like real life, poetically: during interludes that evoke a horror movie, an eerie and ephemeral soundscape (designed by Evdoxia Ragkou) of unintelligible whispers echoes as the characters silently scream and bend forward, reaching for salvation.
The actors balance these two worlds delicately. Lofton gives a powerhouse performance as intellectual dreamer Sade, garnering laughs with a simple raise of the eyebrows. Horne’s Mira is used to playing a closed-off role, but learns to show her vulnerabilities. As the two fight and share memories, they take turns taking the high ground on the slanted floor. The sisterhood chemistry between Lofton and Horne is palpable. They’re equally convincing through all the contradictory emotions that come with close family ties, from bitter envy to profound love.
Under Jasmine B. Gunter’s thoughtful direction, the production brings texture and specificity to the cousins’ world. Mina’s bright yellow shorts and Sade’s red sweatshirt (costumes design by David Arevalo) allude to the colors of characters in their favorite play (and a loving influence on this one), “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” by Ntozake Shange. Snippets of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and a Cheetah Girls song are heard, as well as a creeping time clock as Sade’s furlough comes to an end.
A particularly moving aspect is the spurts of rhythmic choreography, led by local artist and assistant artistic director of Borinquen Dance Theatre Jayme Bermudez. The actors’ bodies become expressive instruments that convey their emotion so effectively that when the characters literally cry, it feels redundant.
Part family drama, part plea for utopia, “Furlough’s Paradise” is deeply urgent. Theater has always been about getting people in a dark room to imagine together. By centering the humanity and dreams of oft-marginalized Black, queer and incarcerated voices, this play offers something beautiful to imagine. A furlough, by definition, is temporary, but this production makes every second of that tick, tick, ticking clock count.
Katherine Varga is a Rochester-based writer and arts educator. On an ideal day, you’ll find her biking to a library or theater.
