a.k. payne

On a three-day furlough from prison, Sade stays with her only cousin, Mina. On a brief reprieve from her life in the West Coast, Mina returns to her hometown for her Aunt's funeral. The cousins try to make sense of grief, home, love, and kinship as time ticks towards the correctional officer's arrival.

Callie been dreaming bout three days in which they may call up who they be beyond Mistress’ language, box, tomb and barrel, to dream beyond Mistress’ “woman.” From her plans drawn out between tobacco rows, come a collective: her twin, her friends, her nameless mother and ancestor. In this adaptation of Julius Caesar, seven plan a revolt in the Antebellum South.

When Amani's mother dies, the world shakes. Her father vows to make it to outer space, where there are no gangs to take his love's life, no prisons to take Black boys' best years. Amani grows up building a rocket ship with her father. As she moves into adulthood, Amani seeks her voice and her own dreams. Will Amani make it to the 'moon'?

Kim has not believed in love in a long time and the rhythm of work threatens to keep her from her dreams. Leticia has got something to say. On a Spring day, both got ten minutes before their shift at the grocery store.

sound and her mama, kendra, have lost a lot of memories. they gather on kendra’s back porch to try to put things back together. along the way, clowning elephants try to help sound along the journey and patriarchal shadows try to steal their dreams. can this Black mother and child witness one another by the end?

a ship churns against the atlantic.

on the deck
a chorus of nine

The air conditioner at 1987 Apple St. been broke for a minute and it's hot in the afterlife.

Sky II comes to her lost grandmother looking for answers; Sky has got some blues records and a bunch of poems.

As Sky tells her grandchild her story, they find ways to live with memories and to beat the heat.

Loosely inspired by oral histories.

Minnie and Dwight live in a world on fire. And so they take off from 'earth' with dreams of starting anew on a planet all their own. What happens to the tongues and rhythms of the once colonized and enslaved when they first taste true freedom? What happens when Minnie & Dwight's dreams and visions wither and diverge? Who remembers and who forgets?  

Noa’s Ark is a diner in Greenwood District where folks come to remake the world. A queer Black woman named Noa stands at the helm and in May of 1921, no one can else can see what’s coming to threaten the streets of Greenwood. Against the backdrop of one of the largest race riots in American history, pairs of lovers try to imagine a world where they can breathe. Is peace possible in a Black future? How do we love with the imminence of violence?

Set at the edge of an old U.S. mill town, EDI YA & DIAMOND’S GROVE tells a story about two Black young people working in an amusement park dripping with ghosts. Since the late 19th century, this land has been roaring with cheap thrills and attractions—statues of calcified cowboys, laffin ladies, infinite swimming pools, dance halls and wooden coasters. Since the 19th century, when their people arrived from the South, this amusement park has been contested for Black peoples of this city and Edi Ya and Diamond have known of it out of the womb. These two who are becoming in this strange smoky city—knowing stories of the pool and dance hall their grandparents could not enter, knowing of long summers spent riding coasters and losing childhood— try to make sense of grief in this place of lost dreams.