Hello Pittsburgh!

This is Monteze Freeland, Artistic Producer and curator of Pittsburgh Playwrights’ 2026 season.

Too often, we let history pass us by. We convince ourselves there will be another opportunity. Another production. Another opening night. I, too, am guilty of this.

But some moments only happen once.

This summer, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company has the extraordinary privilege of bringing home one of the country’s most important playwrights, a.k. payne, with BURNBABYBURN! the american dream.

A Best Play winner at Pittsburgh Playwrights’ 2012 Theater Festival in Black and White, a.k. now returns home, and Pittsburgh has the opportunity to welcome that voice back.

Though audiences across the nation have already discovered what makes a.k.’s work so remarkable, I believe this story belongs here. When Mark Southers asked me to curate this season, I knew a.k.’s voice had to be included.

It breathes Pittsburgh. It carries the rhythm of our neighborhoods, the beauty and burden of our history, and the complex love that exists between generations. I’m not from Pittsburgh, but even I can feel it in my bones.

It is a play about parenthood, identity, chosen family, and hope, written with a poetry that feels both timeless and immediate, highlighting the people of this once smoky city between three rivers.

Today, a.k. payne is making history. Named one of Variety‘s Top Ten Storytellers to Watch, they are the recipient of the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize after being a three-time finalist. Their work has been developed at the country’s leading new play institutions and produced from New York to Atlanta to Los Angeles, just to name a few. They are also the 2026 recipient of the NAACP Theatre Award for Best Playwright.

But before the national recognition, before the awards, a.k. was a child of Pittsburgh.

I know because I was there.

Years ago, I had the privilege of performing in the first produced play a.k. wrote as a student at CAPA through City Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival. Even then, I knew what the rest of the country would soon discover: a.k.’s pen holds diamonds. Their writing uncovers beauty and art where others overlook it. They listen deeply to people, to place, and to history, transforming raw, lived experience into unforgettable theater.

At Pittsburgh Playwrights, we’re honored to bring together exceptional local and national artists, many of whom you already know and love, to tell this story with the care, craft, and truth it deserves. More than producing a new play, we’re celebrating a Pittsburgh artist whose work is changing the landscape of American theater.

Years from now, when people talk about a.k. payne’s journey, I hope you can say, “I was there.”

Don’t let this moment pass you by.

Join us for BURNBABYBURN! the american dream.

History isn’t only something we read about. Sometimes, it happens right in our own backyard.

Monteze Freeland