Having grown up on the same street, the cousins Mina and Sade were once inseparable. But adulthood has taken them down starkly different paths. Mina, an Ivy League graduate, has built a successful career on the West Coast. Sade is in prison. In A. K. Payne’s Furlough’s Paradise, which premiered last year at the Alliance Theatre, Mina and Sade (out on a three-day leave) reunite for a family funeral. Over a weekend of cereal and old television shows, they navigate memories and grief, and share their hopes for the future. In March 2025, the play was awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a prestigious international award. Tinashe Kajese-Bolden directs. —Jeanne Malle