Backstage with Yunina Barbour-Payne of 'Fat Ham'

In a city where the arts scene is growing more inclusive by the season, few productions feel as fresh — and as necessary — as Austin Playhouse’s current production of "Fat Ham." In this Pulitzer Prize-winning reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the backyard is the battleground. Through a Black southern lens, this play is serving more than just drama at the cookout. It’s offering up grilled ribs, generational trauma, joy, laughter, and the unmistakable flavor of truth.

Near the center of the drama is Tedra, the parallel to Shakespeare’s Gertrude, played by Yunina Barbour-Payne, who brings years of performance experience, artistic scholarship, and cultural insight to the role—both on and off the stage. “I am a postdoctoral scholar, so I'm a researcher and also a performer,” she shared. She’s built a career pursuing academic work that sits at the intersection of performance and activism. “I write about artist activism and how artists use their performances onstage to encourage attention for different platforms—environmental justice, women’s rights, race, place, and community. My work moves me between spaces—but my theater home is here in Texas.”

Yunina Barbour-Payne. Courtesy photos

That home first rooted itself in Houston, where Barbour-Payne arrived as a grad student earning her masters up the road at Texas A&M. She immediately found her way to The Ensemble Theatre — literally on her first day in the city. “I auditioned the day I got there,” she recalled. “That theater molded and guided me as an actor. It was a place where I could be a teacher by day and a performer by night, because so many of my contemporaries were doing it also.”

Her time in Houston also deeply influenced her expectations for theater — something she’s had to recalibrate, coming to Austin. “The Ensemble Theatre is a Black theater space, one of the oldest in the country. One of the things I noticed was, the audiences would talk back to me in performance. That's a norm for the ways that they could engage with the work. There was that cultural sense of ‘this is a community experience,’ she explained with a laugh. “I remember playing a role, being in the scene and one of the audience members shouting, ‘Don't you forgive her!’ talking to me as the character on stage. So, there's a different kind of investment, I think, in Black theater spaces. 

While Houston helped shape her as an actor, Austin’s landscape has offered different opportunities and challenges. “The audiences here are more diverse, and oftentimes the companies that I was being cast in weren't always working within a black theater aesthetic,” Barbour-Payne explained. “The roles I got were different as a result of that also. And what I love about that is that it gave me an opportunity to really dive into some more classical work.”

Now, with “Fat Ham”, Barbour-Payne is part of a rare and resonant moment: an all-Black cast, telling a Black Southern story, right in the heart of Texas. “Austin Playhouse has brought together some heavy hitters,” she exclaimed. “Mark Pouhé, Gina Houston, Vivian Noble — the cast is stacked. What that meant for us was that immediately, from day one, there was a sense of what I felt was trust and play among the ensemble.”

Yunina Barbour-Payne, Marc Pouhé, and Albert Igbinigie in Austin Playhouse’s production of James Ijames’s “Fat Ham.”

Barbour-Payne’s character, Tedra, is both an emotional pillar and a vibrant comedic force in the play.“She’s a young mother and loves her son very deeply,” Barbour-Payne explained. Through Tedra, she explores themes of survival, community, and maternal love. “She's coming from a down home mentality and so she carries that with her; as someone who is raising a son and who's experienced the death of a husband, but also is trying to survive that space as a woman. She does it often with what we think is a smile. She has a way of changing the room and also is well aware of her position.”

One of Barbour-Payne’s favorite moments comes from watching the young people in the play break free from their elders. “When they get to just talk without their parents and they get to dream — who they would be, and what they would do if they were free from those expectations — is a moment that I really resonate with,” she confessed. “And I love that it's available for us as an audience; written for us to stop and listen to the young people as they dream out loud, without the restrictions of the adults in their lives or imposed expectations.”

If you think Shakespeare isn’t for you, Barbour-Payne might change your mind. “It means something to be able to see Shakespeare and Black people, and especially in Austin,” she stated. “This is something special. This is a space where as performers, we've had the opportunity to look at Black life as rigorously as people look at Shakespeare. That's on the same plane. To be able to see it on stage is a gift. I hope everyone gets a chance to see this play.”

Austin Playhouse will present “Fat Ham” through June 29. Tickets are on sale now at austinplayhouse.com/fatham.