Cast (left to right): Grant Chapman, Tiffany Hobbs, Joe Knezevich, Tess Mails Kincaid, Louis Reyes McWilliams, Lee Osoria, Brad Raymond and Stephen Ruffin.
The Alliance Theatre is excited to announce the cast of its upcoming world premiere, A Tale of Two Cities. The Charles Dickens classic is adapted by Playwright Brendan Pelsue and directed by Leora Morris. A Tale of Two Cities runs on The Coca-Cola Stage at Alliance Theatre February 21 – March 17, 2024. Opening night is Wednesday, February 28, 2024.
The Dickens classic is set in London and Paris in 1787, before and during the French Revolution and examines the ideals, motivations, and character of the rich and the poor. In Pelsue’s adaptation, eight actors play over fifty characters sharing the identities of the powerful and the powerless.
“What I really admire about this choice [of doubling] and the way it works in the adaptation is that it allows us to ask these big questions about fate, and social mobility, and the spectrum of wealth to poverty, and the role of the individual in impacting the course of history (and more) without translocating it in time and space,” said Director Leora Morris. “It’s not set in contemporary Atlanta, but it feels to me like it has the potential to speak directly to Atlantans about the experience of being born, growing up, or living here in our current time.”
The cast features Grant Chapman (New York Classical Theater: King Leer, Alliance Theatre: Winnie the Pooh), as Actor Track 5, Tiffany Hobbs (FX’s: Atlanta and Pose, Broadway: The Waitress) as Actor Track 3, Tess Malis Kincaid (Netflix: Ozark, Alliance Theatre: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and August: Osage County) as Actor Track 6, Joe Knezevich (Alliance Theatre: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, August: Osage County, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) as Actor Track 8, Louis Reyes McWilliams (Off-Broadway, The Public Theater: Shakespeare in the Park) as Actor Track 2, Lee Osorio (Alliance Theatre: The Temple Bombing and Ugly Lies the Bone) as Actor Track 4, Brad Raymond (Alliance Theatre: A Christmas Carol, Born for This: The BeBe Winans Story) as Actor Track 7, and Stephen Ruffin (FX: Snowfall, Alliance Theatre: Too Heavy for Your Pocket) as Actor Track 1. Understudies include Brant Adams, Daniel Annone, Sean Dale, Rebecca Gunn, Danielle Montgomery, and Ryan Siegel.
The creative team for A Tale of Two Cities includes Director Leora Morris (Alliance: A Christmas Carol, Ride the Cyclone, Crossing Delancey), Playwright Brendan Pelsue (Don Juan, Read to Me), Costume Designer Fabian Fidel Aguilar, Set and Lighting Designer Jiyoun Chang, Composer Chris Ross-Ewart, and Fight Choreographer Jake Guinn.
Additional production support is provided by Stage Manager Liz Campbell, Assistant Stage Manager Barbara Gantt O’Haley, Stage Management Production Assistant LaMarr White, Jr., Line Producers Christopher Moses and Jody Feldman, Associate Set Designer Joo Kim, Associate Lighting Designer David Reingold, and Production Management Lead Lawrence Bennett.
“I have been really excited by the way the team has been inventing a kind of cosmos, a small planet or universe, in which it feels like the story is told,” said Playwright Brendan Pelsue. “Leora is so rigorous in getting us all to attend to what the script is asking, and I think we can really see that in this design that feels both estranging and recognizable––that creates a planet we all visit, which in the way is always the experience of telling and retelling a story.”
Learn more about A Tale of Two Cities.
“Whether it is with people I have worked with before, or people I have worked with for the first time, building community is at the root of my excitement in my work.”
One of a.k. payne’s (she/they) great pleasures is building community. Winner of the 20th annual Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, payne’s play, Furlough’s Paradise, is having its premiere here at the Alliance from January 31 through March 3. We connected with payne to talk about the inspiration behind Furlough’s, what it means to be this year’s Kendeda winner, and their aspirations for audiences seeing the play.
For Atlanta audiences coming to see the show, when they sit down and open this program booklet, what do you want them to know about their experience at Furlough’s Paradise?
Hmm! That’s a good question. I think a lot of the play is about presence, how we witness each other, and how we share space together. These characters are fighting for moments to be in the same room together because that’s been taken from them. So, I want to invite the audience to breathe, and to, like, be in this room with these people. It is kind of a gift, and it feels really special. So, I invite the audience into an opportunity to share space, breath, and air with one another.
One of the things I find fascinating about this story is how it deals with grief and the realities of it. Why did you choose to make grief a character?
Yeah! I’ve been thinking a lot about how grief opens us up in ways nothing else does. Grief lays you bare. For these cousins, grief becomes a portal through which they can reconnect because of everything that’s happened between and because of these barriers — literal walls and differences. And, you know, just years and years of stuff. I don’t know if there’s any other way that they could see each other except through or from the collective experience of grief. I’ve been thinking a lot about how grief has affected Black Diasporic people. What does it mean to grieve when you don’t necessarily have the connection to lineage or language? What does it mean to grieve a lineage you can’t fully trace. So, grief feels really potent for me right now — in my own life and also with these characters. They cling to each other. They find each other. Even though they’re just in this room with each other for these three days, they’re really mourning and get to share uninterrupted space with one another.
I love that. Very rarely do we ever get a time to like, sit, pause, deal with, and process. In this production you have given us permission to do that.
Yeah. The final day, the final day’s scenes are them building a new ritual for mourning that is like their own … My aunt passed away in 2021, and so a lot of this play comes from my own desire to think through what it would mean for my cousin and I to be able to sit together and breathe and talk. This play is really rooted in trying to figure out how these people can manage to process and heal, but not in a linear way, but a circular way.
Part of your personal life shows up in the story. What emotions or anxieties did you have about mixing your personal life into this story?
That’s a big element of a lot of my work. I write a lot from family histories and archives. My cousin was incarcerated. She went to jail when she was about 17 and I was about 13. She spent six years there. But in the play, the characters are older. I aged them up to give them space and time to grieve in a different way. I wanted to write a play about me and my cousin. I kept writing that in my notebook. And I didn’t know what that play was gonna be, but I knew I wanted to do one about us. It wasn’t until I read another play by Amy Herzog that dealt with friends and people in a condensed space that I began to imagine the structure for Furlough’s Paradise. It’s such a vulnerable work that feels really, really tender to think about the ways I’m pouring parts of myself into this, but also being intentional about community. I told my cousin I was writing this and sent her the beginning of it.
How did she respond?
She was like, ‘It’s a play about us!’ She was so excited, but I was so nervous.
One final question. You’re the 2024 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwright Competition Winner. Kendeda has catapulted the careers of so many. How does it feel to have this opportunity to put this very personal story on the stage for others to experience?
I feel really excited and really grateful. Tarell Alvin McCraney, who won Kendeda some years ago, is actually my mentor. He is also one of my favorite writers in the world. And he told me about the competition. So that also makes it even more special. But also, I’m just really grateful for any space to share work, to share work with audiences, and to have resources to fully actualize a dream. I think a lot about plays as like blueprints for imagining freedom, or blueprints for imagining worlds, and the invitation to gather people. This is an opportunity to play around with what that blueprint can do and how we [can] imagine the space to be together.
Learn more about Furlough’s Paradise.
Actor Cymiah Alexander on the first day of rehearsal for the Alliance Theatre, Hertz Stage production of Furlough’s Paradise. Photo by Aniska Tonge.
“In witnessing each other’s grief, we unlock space for joy.” – a.k. payne, Playwright
Furlough’s Paradise is a story that highlights a reunion in grief, and yet it is a reflection of hope and how space is created for joy to exist. As we witness Sade and Mina navigate their individual experiences with grief we also witness, as their time together unfolds, how they are able to create joy in this moment together. Their ability to make room for joy sheds light on a specific perspective that is necessary to isolate so that we better understand the depth it provides to the history of the Black experience.
As a community, Black people have had to carve out our own paths for joy amongst what may be perceived as rugged ground. The reality of our collective pain is what sets our joy apart. And so, the impulse to emphasize the specific experience of Black Joy is necessary because of the ‘in spite of.’
At the center of every historically Black social movement is Black Joy. Moments of song and dance break out in the middle of protests. Black artists have used and continue to use their voices to empower and uplift the community amid these movements. The struggle has been passed down along with the laughs, the memories, the stories, in the ways we express ourselves, and the ways we take care of one another.
Black Joy isn’t merely a statement used to gloss over our grief. It counters the narratives that Black life is only comprised of trauma, grief, and struggle. The idea is not meant to recreate these narratives and ignore the harsh realities of our experiences. Rather, it should serve as an addition to these and prove that our experiences are not monolithic. The struggle is real but so is our resilience in the midst of it.
Often times, the meaning of joy is equated to happiness, however, happiness is fleeting while joy is a constant state of being. Happiness depends on the ‘happenings’ around us. If the Black community solely depended on happiness to get us through, it’s hard to believe we would have been able to endure for so long. Instead, we have relied on what social scientist Arthur Brooks believes are the four pillars that are necessary to maintain joy: faith, family, friends, and work that serves.
Black Joy is as big as the family cookouts and as intimate as eating Cookie Crisps while watching The Proud Family. It’s sitting on the porch, listening to Louis Armstrong with a cup of coffee. It’s humming while dyeing Kanekalon hair for rainbow twists. It’s swaying along to your favorite records. It’s taking a bath in the tub with a broken handle. It’s building a pillow fort and watching The Cheetah Girls. It’s laughing, loudly and uncontrollably. It’s embracing moments where we are not accepted and finding the spaces where we are. It’s dreaming of utopia and thinking about our paradise.
Author Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts states in her book Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration, “If the means is joy, the end must be our healing.” Although the narrative of trauma seems to stay at the forefront of the Black experience, it is the foundation upon which our joy rests to bring healing. Our joy allows us to be free even when enduring the literal and figurative imprisonment of our mind, body, and spirit. It’s that sliver of light we grab onto in the midst of darkness. Black Joy is an act of resistance, a demonstration of our resilience, and a pathway for the restoration of hope.
Learn more about Furlough’s Paradise.
Image: Asha Basha Duniani and Kai Heath
The Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition continues to spotlight the best emerging playwrights with a full production for the competition winner and staged readings for four competition finalists. The 20th competition winner Furlough’s Paradise is written by a.k. payne, a graduate of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, with Direction by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, Alliance’s Jennings Hertz Artistic Director. Furlough’s Paradise will have its world premiere on the Hertz Stage at Alliance Theatre Jan 31 – Mar 3, 2024.
Furlough’s Paradise follows Cousins Sade and Mina, raised like sisters but now leading very different lives, as they return to their childhood town for a funeral. While Sade is on a three-day furlough from prison and Mina experiences a brief reprieve from her career and life on the West Coast, the two try to make sense of grief, home, love, and kinship. But traumas and resentments from the past, both real and surreal, threaten to pull them apart, all as time ticks towards the correctional officer’s impending arrival.
“These characters are fighting for moments,” said Playwright a.k. payne. “Because it’s been taken from them, they are fighting for moments to be in the same room together. A lot of the play is about being present and how we witness each other. How do we share space together. And so, my hope, for audiences, is the same – that they are invited into a chance to share; to share breath and to share air with people, I think that is really special.”
The cast of Furlough’s Paradise includes Asha Basha Duniani (Synchronicity Theatre: Eclipsed; Tyler Perry Studios: Meet the Browns) as Mina; and Kai Heath (Baltimore Center Stage: Hall in Men on Boats; Kennedy Center: The Play that Goes Wrong) as Sade. Understudies include Cymiah Alexander and Makallen Kelley.
The creative team of Furlough’s Paradise is led by Director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden (Alliance: Toni Stone and The Many Wondrous Realities of Jasmine Starr-Kidd) and includes Chika Shimizu (Scenic Design), Shilla Benning (Costume Design), Thom Weaver (Lighting Design), Milton Cordero (Projection Design), Christopher Lane (Sound Design), Julie B. Johnson, PhD (Movement Integration), Laura Morse (Mental Health Consultant), and Ashey Thomas (Dramaturg). Additional production support is provided by Kaylee Mesa (Stage Manager), Samantha Honeycutt (Stage Management Production Assistant), Amanda Watkins (Line Producer), Jayla Dyas (Associate Line Producer), and Lawrence Bennett (Production Management Lead).
“I am excited to be selected as the winner of the 20th annual Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. I am grateful for any space to share work, to share work with audiences, and to have resources to fully actualize a dream,” added payne. “I think a lot about plays as like blueprints imagining freedom, or blueprints for imagining worlds, and the invitation to gather people. I feel like, with this particular play, the blueprint for me is about how do we imagine space to be together. And how is that revolutionary? So, I’m excited.”
The Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition solicits plays from the leading MFA graduate programs in the United States and then conducts a rigorous selection process to find four finalists and one winning play. The winner receives a full production as part of the Alliance Theatre’s regular season. The winner and four finalists also receive development opportunities for their works including staged readings with industry professionals. A one-of-a-kind opportunity for emerging playwrights, the Competition transitions student playwrights to the world of professional theatre.
Past winners of the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition have become some of today’s most exciting playwrights and writers, including Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue inspired the 2017 Academy Award-winning film for Best Picture, Moonlight; Marcus Gardley, who wrote the recent film adaptation of the musical, The Color Purple; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist Meg Miroshnik (The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls), Mike Lew (Tiger Style!), 2018 winner of the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for an Emerging American Playwright, and Mansa Ra, whose competition-winning play Too Heavy For Your Pocket opened off-Broadway in 2017.
Learn more about Furlough’s Paradise.
Learn more about the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition.
Onstage and Off Article (250-500 words)
A Tale of Two (or More) Roles
How A Tale of Two Cities Represents a More Just Society through Intentional Casting
By Kay Nilest
Are our lives determined at birth?
In Charles Dickens’ classic, A Tale of Two Cities, the people of France embark on a revolution to build a better world. Quickly, the ideals of social change become muddied in the messy realities of revolution. Friend becomes foe, justice becomes twisted for personal gain, and personal vendettas become more important than the common good. All this begs the question: how can we create just society in a world stratified by individualistic motivations?
One answer lies in an ethical thought experiment called the Veil of Ignorance. Coined by philosopher John Rawls, the idea behind the Veil of Ignorance is that in order to envision a more equitable society, we must separate ourselves from our individual identities1. Imagine you are sitting behind a veil that blocks you from knowing anything about yourself. You could be rich or poor, old or young, blind or seeing. Therefore, you must design a world that would benefit all these identities and more. A world in which the privileges are shared by all, and any specific benefits or support structures are built to serve those who might need them most. The Veil of Ignorance helps us look at the world outside of our own personal contexts and consider more objectively how society should operate.
Rather than placing characters behind a literal veil on stage, this production explores the concept of the objective identity through intentional doubling and casting. To represent a novel as sweeping as A Tale of Two Cities with only eight actors, each actor is assigned a specific set of characters to play. Playwright Brendan Pelsue explains the intentionality in these character sets, “I have tried to construct each actor’s set of roles so that they inhabit positions of power and positions of powerlessness.” One actor may play both a kind-hearted revolutionary and a self-interested elite, both a young mother and an aged Lord.
The play then goes a step further to break the fourth wall by giving the actors themselves dialogue lines as they transition between characters. When told they must stand trial as a person accused of treason, Actor 2 asks, “Do I have to do this?”
“The role you’re given is the role you’re given. The world insists you play it,” insists Actor 1, who assumes the role of Narrator and Guide. This creates a distinction between actor and character that allows the audience to reevaluate our own biases about what types of people belong in positions of power. More specifically, it encourages us to reconsider the societal structures around justice, and who is worthy of giving and receiving it.
The Veil of Ignorance, though an interesting ethical thought experiment, rarely applies to real life. We don’t live behind safe walls of irrelevant identity—we live in a messy, biased, unfairly balanced world. However, what the Veil of Ignorance, A Tale of Two Cities, and I’d argue theatre in general have in common is that they all try to present us another way. Through art, we model what it means to live in a
just world, or at least one in which our heroes live to fight another day. Then, once the lights come up and we’re exiting the theatre with our candy wrappers and deep thoughts, maybe we will begin to envision a way that the world on stage can become the one around us.
A Tale of Two Cities Your Story, Your Stage
Can a community renounce the poverty its people inherited?
Atlanta is a tale of two cities, a place of paradox. It’s the home of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the world’s busiest airport. A city “too busy to hate” and the capital of Black culture. And yet, a child born in poverty in Atlanta has the lowest chance at significant economic mobility of any major city in the U.S. But why? Why does dust from the construction of new, glittering skylines cover the blocks of historic neighborhoods as they await their inevitable renaming and sale?
In a city steeped in possibilities, we have the highest income inequality in the nation. Today, the median white household here owns 46x as much wealth as the median Black household. That gap is as wide as it was nationally in 1863 – just 4 years after Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities was published. Our quality of life has improved in that time, but our economic and racial disparities have not. Unfortunately, we too often embrace a shallow version of what Dr. King called “the beloved community.” A version that prioritizes representation over equity and the comfort of the passengers over the direction of the train.
It is indeed the best of times and the worst of times, and yet we have the power to do something about it. At the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund, we build bold solutions to address poverty and narrow the racial wealth divide. Solutions like In Her Hands, a guaranteed income initiative that provides women in Georgia with an income supplement – no strings attached. Developed with community members, we demonstrate that people closest to the issue are often the most knowledgeable about solving it. Solutions like Baby Bonds, that invest in young people to help build wealth, setting us on a path to narrowing the racial wealth divide by 25%. Programs like these make a significant and direct impact.
We celebrate those who overcome significant obstacles because, deep down, we know how hard it is to defy the status quo and envision a better future. Many aren’t able to – despite their best efforts. If we’re ever going to live in a city that isn’t defined by the line from Buckhead to Bankhead, we’ll need your help. Go to www.2Atlantas.com and learn how you can help end the divide. Let’s make this one, united city.
Paul Glaze
Communications Director
Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund
When you imagine your perfect utopia, what do you see?
Maybe it’s that once in a lifetime family gathering when everyone gets along; maybe it’s living in that perfect city, with that perfect partner, with that perfect job. Maybe your utopia is less self-serving and more about our world at large. Perhaps you dream of a society where the laws of the land solely prioritize the underrepresented; there is access for all to good education and health care; there is a unified commitment to the abolition of systems that are oppressive by design.
The thing about utopia is that its literal definition is “no place.” It doesn’t exist. Instead it’s in the striving for change, the wrestling with the injustices of the dystopia we see all around us, in the insisting on imagining “what can be” in the wake of memories of “what was” that we move towards a more whole and functioning society.
a.k. payne. Remember this name because if you are a regular theatre goer (and we do hope you are), you will for sure come across it again and again. Their magnificent play is a story between two cousins. It’s a story that grapples with grief and regret, while celebrating the unwavering bond of kinship and our connections to home. It’s a play that beautifully navigates the what can be if time were infinite and options limitless in the face of the realities of upbringing, of roads taken and not taken, of latent grievances that can be paralyzing. More than anything this play teaches us that when we confront, face to face, loss and discomfort, only then can we dare to hope.
This production of Furlough’s Paradise, as luck would have it, aligns with our celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. For two decades our theatre has wrapped its arms around original stories by emerging writers from MFA programs across the country, stories that open our hearts and minds to the evergreen question, what can be?
Take a moment and introduce yourself to your neighbor. Share your hardships and your joys. Share your visions of your imagined utopias. You might be surprised by how your dreams align. Even better, you might learn you have a dream you didn’t even know you have. Let’s create a revolution by defying the literal definition of utopia. If but for these couple of hours in the theatre, it just may exist.
We are so glad you are here.
Amanda
In the landscape of social justice, “Barred Business” is a beacon of hope, dedicated to uplifting and empowering those impacted by the criminal legal system. Barred Business was created to disrupt the narratives of Justice-Impacted people and humanize people who are often discarded. There are striking parallels between Barred Business’s real-world mission and the poignant themes explored in Furlough’s Paradise, a play that delves deep into justice, freedom, and the intricacies of societal challenges.
Barred Business takes a comprehensive approach to supporting justice-impacted individuals. From advocating for human rights restoration, policy change, using people centered language, community building, vocational training to legal assistance, the organization works to build power in the Justice Impacted community. Notably, its policy initiatives, education and job placement have rewritten numerous success stories, fundamentally altering lives. These achievements not only highlight the organization’s commitment but also underscore the potential for transformation in the lives of those it serves.
Furlough’s Paradise is a profound exploration of family bonds, societal challenges, and the quest for freedom. Central to its narrative is the complex journey of individuals navigating the justice system. The play poignantly portrays the struggles and resilience inherent in this journey, offering a nuanced perspective on the themes of redemption, societal reintegration, and the unyielding strength of the human spirit.
The endeavors of Barred Business find a compelling echo in Furlough’s Paradise. Both the organization and the play skillfully address the struggles, dreams, and aspirations of justice-impacted individuals. This parallel underscores the significance of support and understanding in their journey towards reintegration and empowerment. By reflecting these themes, Barred Business not only exemplifies the essence of the play but also highlights the broader societal importance of empathy and second chances.
This exploration magnifies the crucial role of initiatives like Barred Business and narratives like Furlough’s Paradise in fostering social change. They collectively amplify the importance of supporting and understanding justice-impacted individuals, driving a movement towards a more equitable and inclusive society.