Ahead of the Pittsburgh premiere of a.k. payne’s BURNBABYBURN: an american dream, the local writer was named Best Playwright for her play Furlough’s Paradise at the 31st annual NAACP Theatre Awards, held Monday, June 29, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in LA.
Honorees at the awards ceremony included Delroy Lindo (Lifetime Achievement), Beverly Todd, and Robert Hooks.
The two-hander Furlough’s Paradise, which “explores family dreams of a utopia yet to be realized,” also won the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, was honored with six trophies. The script was printed in full in American Theatre Magazine’s spring 2026 edition, along with a Q&A with payne.
Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company held a staged reading of BURNBABYBURN, directed by Karla C. Payne, on June 13 at Madison Arts Center. The world premiere, a PPTC coproduction with the August Wilson House, will be August 25-September 13, 2026, outdoors at the Hill District landmark. The Pittsburgh-set play features Hope Anthony as Sky, and Katherine Bruce as Sky II, a young woman on a journey to heal herself and the generations who came before her. The cast also includes Michele Bankole, Anthony Grace, Destiny Nwafor, and DeVaughn Robinson.
In 2023, payne was awarded $50,000 over two years via a Pittsburgh Foundation grant that “supports a self-curated playwright residency, the development of new works, and the curation of Black Story Circles, a gathering practice of Black literary artists.”
“I will engage with personal and public archives and write several new plays,” she said at the time. “This project will work to create deep networks, collaborative and restful space and to uplift Black literary artists with roots in the city. It aims to build a creative hub for Black writers that may serve as a bulwark against the exodus of many artists from the city.”
🎟️ TICKETS AND DETAILS: pghplaywrights.org.
Before Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company heads to the International Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina to present Mark Clayton Southers’ Art of Wise (2025), the play will be reprised at Madison for one night only, on July 25.
🎟️ TICKETS AND DETAILS: pghplaywrights.org.
Categories: Arts and Ideas, National and Local Awards, Our Posts
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