Notes on a Script: a.k. payne Breaks Down FURLOUGH'S PARADISE

Hi, my name is A.K. Payne. I'm the writer of Furlough's Paradise, and I'm the winner of the 47th Susan Smith Blackburn Prize

So Furlough's Paradise has two characters. We have Mina, whose name means love, an only child, a cousin, born in 1991

Shade, whose name means honor earns a crown or rain. Mina call her day, an only child, a cousin, born 1991

I knew that the container of a furlough was going to be these like three days that Chade had out

And I wanted to really just think about what it would mean to kind of zoom in on that time these characters have together

which is like very finite and they know it to be finite. And I was kind of curious about the question of like, what do we do with time when we know it to be like, to be passing and to be, to be limited, right

And I think that's such a defining question of like black life because so much of like how how we live is affected by the systems that we're in

And so like what does it mean to be trying to live and to exist and to dream while even knowing that all these systems are poised against us

And I think that's true of so many different communities. But I think we think about like the histories of black life in this country

So much of it is defined by those things. In this section of the play, we're really looking at like presence

and like what is the task of like trying to be present together

and trying to witness each other But also the work of like trying to build a grieving ritual The characters are like in this last day sort of figuring out what does that look like for them in real time

I am for sale, numbered, marked, and it gets really scary at night

Nights are really very hard in there. And I don't ever get to be soft except for rare moments when G and I can sneak away and pretend we are absolutely anywhere else

She's really smart. Like I swear to God, she could be president or like Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou. Like there are words I have that didn't know I had and at random moments I

realize they're from her. I would give anything for a chance for the two of us to get out

and get a full ride to some fancy school and get on the plane and fly to like upstate New York

or Connecticut and just read shit and write shit and solve equations and freely and let

everything fall away. And it makes me really angry when you talk about that time like it was

hell and I'm sorry this world hates us and I'm sorry you had a hard time and I'm so very

very sorry about your tongue not knowing where it's safe. And I'm so glad you have a corner of the

universe where you feel safe, where you can figure it out what your own tongue sounds like

unencumbered. You deserve that. You really do, Amina. We all really do. I was drowning in essays

and papers. In poems, it left me feeling like I was bleeding. It left me feeling like I was empty

Like there was nothing else left to give. Like to write another word in this strange language to describe

my own life, to describe you, as if you are object in a culture trying to make me subject

trying to make me a retriever be separate from you I wanted just to be Amina neither subject nor object another tongue nor word just body I tore apart my closet looking for fits that would not make me visible clothing I could disappear into something that would not accentuate the parts of me that were other

The edges of myself that became terrifying, even to myself, I did not know where I began and

that place ended. That second year I went on medical leave and I tried to scrub off my skin

I stopped eating anything that tasted like home. I stopped eating. I burned alive from the inside out and no one knew

I put myself back together on my own and so what I was curious about with these two monologues

was sort of just thinking about how to create how to sort of mirror the voices of these two characters

how to create a structure in which they were almost speaking the same language

with slight variations and that we're able to see them because the point of the play I think is really that

we're able to see both of them fully and that it isn't easy to say that one person's right or one

person's wrong and really the actual act of comparison is what produces the violence that the

invitation is truly that they both have been through they both have been through different

versions of of containment of like of being trapped and so there isn't really

the work of the play is really trying to excavate, like, how do they understand each other differently

by being able to see how they both have been through things And like the actual the systems try to sort of create this like division between them but actually they are sitting somewhere together And so yeah I hoping that these monologues are kind of allowing both characters

to really speak their truths and let them not be exactly like, in some ways they don't

make sense all the way together, but that's actually the point that they're able to

see one another through these like binaries that are created to kind of be like

you have privilege and you don't, or you went through this and you didn't

And so we can never understand each other, but actually they're able to see each other

through their differences and love each other through their past and their futures and

their presence. I'm just really grateful to be in community with so many other incredible women plus playwrights

I've had two other plays that were finalists for the award in the last two years, and so

It's been such a gift to be able to meet so many incredible artists, a total of like 30 of us over these three years

And I just feel like that's like one of the most incredible things is like the community that this prize generates

and the ways that it invites us to think about what does it mean to be writing as a woman plus artist right now

to be writing as a person who is navigating marginalization in relation to gender and who is trying to like imagine new world

from that place. I think we have really important things to say and like I just really

want to advocate and lift up the other finalists and people who are been honored with

this prize throughout the years. So I feel really grateful and excited