April Yvette Thompson
Tony-winning producer, actor, writer & TheDreamUnLocked founder.
April works across film, television and theater, and coaches actors, writers and dreamers to master the craft and business of StoryTelling.
Biography
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 City, The 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 the 2017 Tony for Best Revival for August Wilson’s Jitney, directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and the 2012 Tony for Best Revival, Porgy & Bess, starring Audra McDonald (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 Lives, is in development at NYTW.
Education: Vassar College & Rutgers University.
Credits at a glance
Tony-winning producing teams
August Wilson’s Jitney, Best Revival 2017 · Porgy & Bess, Best Revival 2012
Sundance features
Blue Caprice · Mother of George · Gun Hill Road, produced as SimonSays Entertainment Director of Development
Playwright & performer
The Miami Trilogy at New York Theatre Workshop: Drama Desk, Outer Critics & Lortel nominations, Jeff Award
The Miami Trilogy
April wrote, produced and starred in Good Bread Alley and Liberty City at New York Theatre Workshop. Her play Black Lives is in development at NYTW.
Those plays began in the StoryTelling Circle. “Coming to the page made me so anxious that the stories lived in my head and my heart, but not on the page,” April says. So she researched the sweeping historical events that affected her and told those stories aloud in monthly storytelling circles at home, recording them. By the end of the year she had 500 pages of story.
“I’d never written anything besides a grocery list when I wrote my first play. The first play I ever wrote got an off-Broadway production offer from the artistic director after one public reading at a music stand.”
What it’s like to work with April
Fun. Like that one aunt that is brilliantly unfettered in her opinions and interests. Well travelled and free of heart.
April is the teacher who wants you to transform your world view: from an unimportant cog in the wheel of this business, buffeted about by every new fad, to the CEO of your career. Making a living as a working actor and storyteller, guiding and shaping a career that illuminates your understanding of the human condition. You know, the stuff no one teaches you in school.
She has hosted writers in her Harlem loft, in a Moroccan riad, in a castle in Lausanne and on the cliffs of the Oaxacan coast. And she ran off to live in Morocco for three years, “not to find myself, but rather to remember who I was and what I dreamed of as a little six year old girl.”
We don’t want to just take your money. We want to give you the tools to change your life.
In the words of April’s clients
April Yvette Thompson is one of the most influential teaching artists I have ever worked with. She is a first rate teacher and coach who has had an immense impact on my life. Whether April is functioning as an acting coach, business teacher or writing instructor, which I have been lucky enough to have been her student in all three capacities, her teaching is incredibly specific. I would not be at the Juilliard School right now if I hadn’t worked with her.
I wanted to learn what April knows because of her leadership, her energy, her stamina, her vision… the way she thinks outside the box.
April is an incredible midwife of genius…
My solo show sold out last month and I produced and directed 2 one acts in May. In the past month I’ve had callbacks for Gotham and Limitless, 3 print ad look sees, 2 commercial auditions. Oh, and great head shots and a cool website and an enhanced wardrobe, etc. This is just the beginning of the new ME, so excited for more of your coaching and mentoring… 10 years as an actor and this has been the best year in my career… SO FAR!!
More stories from April’s clients are coming soon.
Work with April
Start with a 60-minute Discovery Session and pay what you can. Or email April@thedreamunlocked.com for events, press and coaching questions.