Life is more important than art. That’s what makes art so important.
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers.
The precise role of the artist is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place."
James Baldwin
From its inception, theatre was not separate from the church or places of worship. It was created for storytellers to illuminate the human condition, to help us reflect on our foibles, find compassion for ourselves and others and do better, the next time around. Theatre begins with telling a story that was often a cautionary tale and other times a celebration of our lives on this gorgeous planet. But always, theatre comes fro telling your story as you have lived it.
Yet, the American theatre has spent decades telling stories that have nothing to do with the people in the communities that they serve. As a result, it’s become a tradition that most professional American theaters spend decades at a huge deficit because they continue to make work that no one wants to see.
So, instead of turning course and changing the how and what of the stories they tell, what do they do?
These theatres hire bright, super talented, experienced artistic directors of color and then undercut all of their power.
Remember, these theatres are in millions of dollars of debt, right. Arena Stage alone has been carrying a $60 million dollar loan taken out in 2018 (to cover the previous decades of debt) and was re-negotiating how to pay that back by the end of 2023. At the same time they brought in a new AD of color.
Did no one inform the new AD that desperate financial measures were needed to be enacted?
Did they give a timeline for recoupment?
Or did the board simply expect the new AD to come up with a plan to pay off the debt in 3 years?
Because that’s how long the board gave Hana S. Sharif to try to make sense of the Arena Stage’s historical debt.
Sorry, that’s crazy.
Between 2020-2026, major American Theatres have been virtue signalling their inclusivity while undermining the very leaders they hired.
Because as soon as those artistic directors successfully begin bringing down the debt (that their tenure did not incur) by scoring record breaking ticket sales, producing new work that creates new audiences, they are forced out of their jobs for doing the very thing they were hired to do.
Theatre boards set up these AD’s for failure in an effort to find a scapegoat for decades of poor financial management.
How?
By insisting that these ADs continue doing the same things that created the debt in the first place.
Why?
The resistance to change is stifling the process of bringing storytelling into the 21st century,.
These Artistic Directors of color were hired and fired within 3 years while most AD’s hold those positions for decades:
Long Wharf Theatre AD, Jacob Padron
Arena Stage AD, Hana S. Sharif
Baltimore Center Stage AD, Stephanie Ybarra
Oregon Shakespeare Festival AD, Nataki Garret
3 years later, they are all gone.
This problem is endemic of a much larger trend.
Resistance to change is preventing stories that matter from being told
I say this as an actor who has worked across media, produced Broadway, won a Tony for it, written, tproduced and toured my own plays and produced four Sundance films. When producers, film production companies and theatres told me that the stories that were important to me and my generation weren’t worth producing; I produced them successfully myself.
Storytelling in our country has become limited by formulaic nonsense and proscribed regurgitations of the same tired stories we’ve heard over and over again. From novels, to play to screenplays, we’re not creating and supporting new stories.
And guess what, the audiences that put butts in seats have gone elsewhere for storytelling that reflects the unprecedented times in which are living .
American
Storytelling
has a Problem
So, what happens to new stories in a climate hostile to truth and light, empathy and compassion, complexity and the fullness of the human condition?
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So, what happens to new stories in a climate hostile to truth and light, empathy and compassion, complexity and the fullness of the human condition? ✳︎ ✳︎ ✳︎ ✳︎
Now, more than ever we need new stories to give us hope, to remember that we’re human and that our bodies, our earth are fragile and deserve care. Stories are where we remember our vulnerable humanity.
Why Telling Your Story is Necessary
Stories are where we learn to empathize and create more compassion in a world that has become violent and every interaction transactional.
We have a lot of problems that need to be solved. Telling stories is how we reimagine what is possible . When there are no new stories, we focus on fear instead of possibility.
Telling our stories forces us to face our fears and turn them into problems with solutions, if only we’d stop and listen to the story that wants to be told instead of the story that arises from fear and desperation.
Stories unite us in purpose. Every great leader has led by telling stories of hope and triumph over impossible odds. That is the power of storytelling.
In my decades of teaching, I have met writers in classrooms, retreats, private parties, private coaching in theatre workshop and if they finish, it’s because they write as if their lives depended on it.
I light a candle on my altar for a writer who was dying of cancer who wrote the most magical stories of wonder and hope. She wrote about crafting and quilting like it was the stuff of life. She is gone now, but her light has illuminated my darkness again and again.
I’ve taught women writers who had lost their parents and were reckoning with the intergenerational trauma that was never healed. Women who were adrift in their grief, guilt and viscerally cognizant of their own mortality using writing to find their way back.
I’ve taught immigrant writers who watched the country of their birth being destroyed by their new country tell their stories to make sense of it and continue the fight for humanity to win over war.
I taught an amazing writer who had written a book and didn’t know it. But the act of writing the book in a supportive storytelling circle helped her realize just how much she had accomplished and where she was settling. The act of writing gave her the courage to leave her abusive employer, travel and start to make a living from her writing.
I’ve created spaces for women to tell stories in the privacy of warm homes with homemade chai tea, candles and savory soups on the stove.
Women bring photos of people who transformed their lives, a doll that kept childhood nightmares at bay, grandmothers still tending their peanut farms on their 100th birthday.
The stories I’ve borne witness to changed me, changed how I move through the world and gave me the kind of hope that heals. And the telling of the stories themselves changed these women.
I’ve hosted writers in my harlem loft with a third floor outdoor deck.
I’ve hosted writers in my Moroccan Riad with a second floor balcony of cascading flowering vines.
I’ve taught writing workshops in a beautiful castle in Lausanne. (yeah, epic)
I’ve hosted writers on the cliffs of the Oaxacan coast overlooking a magically turbulent sea.
And everywhere that I’ve hosted writers, the stories have been far more magical than anything I’ve seen in the American theatre, TV and film.
And those stories came from women just like you. Creative people looking for a place to tell the story that changed them because they are not seeing stories that reflect the lives they have lived, loved and survived.
They tell stories about the 21st century movements that have changed the American landscape for the better.
Stories that brought down walls between people and governments for the first time in centuries.
Stories of people in their prime of life figuring out that the exhausting job, the partner who won’t grow, the children leaving the nest are not the end of the story. They are the beginning of a new story. A new story that you have the foresight and vision to design for yourself.
If you dream it
If it’s a story that won’t let your mind rest.
If you’ve been talking about writing forever and never done it
If you’ve started, but never finished because you don’t know how to structure the story
It means that there’s a story within you dying to be told. You simply need a place of safety, rest and attention to guide you through the telling of a story your heart has already told.
I am a keeper of that space. I began my career as a teacher, then an actor, then a writer and finally a producer. Every facet of my life has been organized by the stories I tell about myself and my world. It is a story of how I wove my pain into a beautiful tapestry of light. Of how I accomplished things without an guidebook and examples to follow. I made it up as I went along by reading and re-writing my story.
Telling my stories forced me to re-imagine my life. Guiding writers through the process of telling and finishing their stories is a kind of life giving magic.
The moment you watch someone tell their story and then have the immediate revelation of how wondrous their life has been is the gift that keeps giving.
Telling your story is neccesary.
And I have discovered an effortless way to help you do it:
TheStoryTellingCircle
TheStoryTellingCircle
Meet my client Juan Francisco Villa who will talk to you about how TheStoryTellingCircle works and how it transformed his career and his life.
“April's strong, quiet, supportive presence was more vital to me exploring MY story than I would have thought.
The safe environment she creates gave me freedom to be fully honest with myself in ways that surprised myself.
In any interviews I give nationally about my solo play "Empanada For A Dream (nominated for a Jeff Award for Best Solo Show), I make sure to mention April Yvette Thompson's name because the most complete stories in my award winning play were from her workshops.
She has inspired me to help others tell their stories. She taught me that the same commitment I give to others, I should give to myself. I haven't looked back.”
-- Juan Francisco Villa Actor/Writer
Telling your Story is the power of foresight in action. It’s powered by hindsight that dares you to write about the path not taken. Let’s take that ride together.
*Join The StoryTelling Circle
Telling your Story is the power of foresight in action. It’s powered by hindsight that dares you to write about the path not taken. Let’s take that ride together. *Join The StoryTelling Circle
Telling your story forces you to RECONCILE your life with your DREAMS and COURSE CORRECT
What you cannot IMAGINE,
you cannot CREATE.
That’s how storytelling transforms your life.
It shows you how much you’ve grown and accomplished.
It makes you aware of all the places where
you’re accepting FEAR instead of POSSIBILITY.
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
April Yvette Thompson is a Tony-winning producer/writer/actor working across media. Film/TV credits include BULL, Blue Caprice, Gotham, Blue Bloods, Babylon Fields, The Exonerated (w/Susan Sarandon & Delroy Lindo), Accidental Husband, Backwards, Law & Order & Third Watch, etc.
Broadway/Off Broadway credits include Clybourne Park, (Pulitzer & Tony); Vassar Voices (w/Meryl Streep), Good Bread Alley, Liberty CityThe Exonerated (w/Gabriel Byrne, Richard Dreyfuss), Medea, King Lear, Macbeth, Antigone & Light Raise the Roof.
As SimonSays Entertainment Director of Development, April produced Sundance features: Blue Caprice (w/Isaiah Washington), Mother of George (w/Danai Gurira), Gun Hill Road (w/Esai Morales). April was on the Tony-winning producing teams for 2017 Tony for Best Revival for August Wilson's Jitney directed by Ruben Santiago Hudson and 2012 Tony for Best Revival, Porgy & Bess starring Audra MacDonald (Tony).
April wrote, produced & starred in her Miami Trilogy of plays: Good Bread Alley and Liberty City (Drama Desk, Outer Critics, Lortel noms & Jeff Award) at New York Theatre Workshop. Her latest play, Black Livesis in development at NYTW.
Education: Vassar College & Rutgers University.
AprilYvetteThompson.com
There are 3 ways to Join TheStoryTelling Circle
Fix My Story
$0.00
A 1:1 Private Writers Retreat.
Day One: We’ll hear your script read aloud and April will give you a comprehensive page by page notes. You go home, do re-writes and come back with a second draft.
Day Two: We’ll hear the new draft read aloud. Followed by a brief notes session and next steps.
This is a brand new offering. I usually do this with private coaching clients over 12 Session. However the private retreat is now being offered for a limited time.
This is usually a $3200 package. I’m opening up this opportunity for the first time to my exclusive mailing list for a very special one-time only price for the summer for $1500. If your account is in good standing, you are eligible for the Payment plans starting at
You have 3 months from the date of purchase to complete the 2 Day Retreat
