New York Theatre Workshop has added Liberty City, written by Jessica Blank and April Yvette Thompson to its 2007-2008 schedule. Performed by Thompson and directed by Blank, the show will begin previews on February 15, 2008, and the company's off-Broadway home and open on March 4, running through March 16. The previously announced Things of Dry Hours, written by Naomi Wallace and directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, has been rescheduled and will now open the 2008-09 season in June 2008.
Named for the site of Miami's infamous 1980 riots, Liberty City tells the personal story of a family in a place where people of the African Diaspora have settled and where urban and island cultures rub up against each other. Thompson, the daughter of a Bahamian and Cuban father and an African-American mother who are free thinking movement people and sometimes just plain poor. As the hope of the 60's and 70's gave way to the disintegration of the 80's, her family struggled to survive and stay together.
Thompson's theater credits include The Exonerated, The Antigone Project, Light Raise the Roof, SICK??? at SPF; The Rivals, Macbeth, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Medea, Macbeth, King Lear, The Blacks, 365 Plays/365 Days, Second Line, Wine in the Wilderness, A Raisin in the Sun and The Venus De Milo is Armed
