REGISTER FOR THE FREE WRITING CLASS

You want to know why it's so hard to tell your story?

Because writing is hard AF.

Ever wondered why you sit down to put pen to paper and nothing happens? For the same reason that people will do EVERYTHING, but go to therapy. Because once you speak the truth out loud on paper, you cannot hide from those words. In writing, you have to go back and look at those words again and again to refine and clarify your story.

When people say dumb to me that is beyond all reckoning, I always say: Can you say that again out loud so you can hear yourself?

They rarely repeat the same thing because the original statement was

  1. dumb AF

  2. manipulative

  3. total denial

  4. just not true

Well, writing is like that. You cannot hide from what was said. If you're having a hard time finishing, it ain't writers' block because that requires that you actually write every day and all the time.

No, you're not blocked. You scared.

Scared that you won't get it right

Scared that your unpopular opinion will piss people off

Scared of opening yourself to other peoples' scrutiny.

But here's the thing, being afraid of telling your truth is the only way to set the record straight. To tell the world a truth that forces people to reckon with themselves. When you tell your story, no one can say, no way that's not true. Because it is your lived experience and your version of it doesn't use the popular arguments.

I wrote a play inspired by my great grand mother's world of fornicating preachers, loud and wrong church ladies, a gangster business woman who pistol whipped any man believing he could lay hands on her, a beautiful man who loved men & women while also marrying a woman.

This last one is a doozy. This character is regal, masculine in his beauty, elegant in his carriage. Because he's black in 1926, no one expects him to be a classically trained musician. So, he dons himself in the lush robes he deserves and nightly serves up a pitch perfect La Boheme (no lip syncing anywhere) in drag everynight in a fancy hotel. His voice is a wonder. His piano playing sublime. He loves beauty in all things. Sometimes, he loves strong masculine men to that make him feel loved and cherished. Other times he loves lush, brown women with a voices of steel and an unapologetic sensuality.

The actor I cast was perfect for the role. We do the table read and afterwards he quits because "no gay man would say and do these things and I'm offended by this portrayal."

My response: Well he did and was proud of it. Because he is a real living and breathing person I grew up with. He is magic and fire and unhidden grace. And your limited understanding of yourself should not squeeze the lived truth of my character.

You cannot argue with the truth and still look cute. The truth doesn't care about pedagogy on queerness. Your safe language that boxes people into neat little packages that you kee kee about over spritzers.

No, he did not call himself non-binary, gay, bisexual, pan sexual or anything else. And that is his truth. His truth is beautiful and cannot be quantified by whatever movement is currently in place. He wholeheartedly rejects those titles. His spirit cannot be contained and doesn't follow polite lines of queerness.

And the actor who refused to play him was unwilling to confront uncomfortable truths within himself, so he could not imagine a man who had moved beyond his limitations.

That's what writing does. It forces the world to stop and reckon with someone who is not "politically performing their life" but who is living outside manufactured boxes.

When you write from the expansiveness of your lived experience, it's so much bigger than our day-to-day conversations and trends and movements. I wrote because I grew up with fantastical, bold people living lives unknown and unchartered.

Writing gives you the power to say what is unsaid. To clarify what's been lost in fear and anxiety. Writing your story is a uniquely powerful way to come back to yourself. A self with no limits and the power to change what everyone said was immovable.

Your truth can be shocking, incredulous but it cannot be denied. It sets you free from your bullshit, the ways you've made choices that made you smaller to please others. Writing changes you as you face all the stories you've lived, survived & conquered.

Autobiographical writing is always the most freeing for you and your audience. Telling your story frees you up to tell uncomfortable truths reshape your reality. Telling your story literally sets you free to become who you want to be; not what others want you to be.

-April Yvette Thompson

Tony-winning producer, actor, writer TheDreamUnLocked.com founder


REGISTER FOR THE FREE CLASS

Why are you still auditioning and hoping for the best when you could be performing, showing the industry the full scope of your abilities while collecting 3 checks: actor, writer & producer?

ASK ME HOW I KNOW

‍ ‍

Meet TheDreamUnLocked Founder,

April YvetteThompson

I'm a Vassar grad with an MFA from Rutgers. From child advocacy at the Children's Defense Fund to Award winning actor/playwright in the world premiere of "Liberty City" off Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop.

I did not wait to be chosen

Early in my career, I focused on the classics from Medea to Lady Macbeth at Classical Theatre of Harlem & the Acting company.

Those skills prepared me for TV/Film/Theatre earning credits on CBS' "BULL, "Blue Bloods," "Gotham" Law & Order, "The Exonerated,"Blue Caprice" to Clybourne Park on Broadway.

Learning to make my own work was a critical part of my development as an artist. From an interpreter of work to a creator of work, I joined SimonSays Entertainment where I learned how to produce and fund indie film & Broadway projects. Our first 4 films: "Night Catches Us,"Gun Hill Road," "Blue Caprice" & "Mother of George" premiered at Sundance.

While acting in "Clybourne Park" on Broadway, I was also on the Broadway producing teams of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and the Tony-Winning revival of Porgy & Bess starring Audra MacDonald.

When I wasn't on stage during the day, I wrote and developed my second play "Good Bread Alley" which had developmental workshops at The Arsht Center for the Performing Arts & New York Stage & Film.

Once I understood how much power there is in producing your own work, I successfully completed $100,000 Kickstarter in 30 days to develop and workshop "Good Bread Alley" culminating in a workshop production of the play with a small orchestra.

Forging my own way in the business was something I knew was my destiny. Because the container for American storytelling is far too small to hold the stories of a brown woman working class intellectual raised in a sea of struggle and revolution amidst three different cultures rife with colorism and economic strife. I needed a whole lot more than Hollywood's meager containers for all the stories I had to tell.

Armed with the tenacity that growing up with less provides; receiving an upper class Ivy education while balancing very real economic realties required the ability to align who I knew myself to be in spite of the limited framework the world had created for me. That required mastering the rules I intended to break to tell stories that were the complex truth of my SoulsSong in a world unprepared for the truths I held.

When you enter the world of storytelling this way, you never expect the haphazard systems you're taught to navigate in school and in the industry to work for you. Instead of moving through the world begging for acceptance, you understand that yours is a story that has not been told and in order to live your dreams out loud, you will have to create, imagine and launch your own stories just like Quinta Brunson, Issa Rae, Brit Marling, Michaela Coel & Shonda Rhimes.

And that is what I've done and what I teach my clients.

SignUp for the next free class to learn how.


Work With Us