April Yvette Thompson Recounts Real Life Memories in Liberty City

(April Yvette Thompson with director Jessica Blank at the press call for Liberty City at the Arsht Center. PHOTO BY MANNY HERNANDEZ)

April Yvette Thompson knows Miami's Liberty City. It's where urban and island cultures rub up against each other, and it's where she grew up with her Bahamian/Cuban father and African-American mother. Now she brings to life that neighborhood as it was during her childhood - the turbulent 1970s and '80s, a time when hope and the possibility of change gave way to disillusionment and disintegration, and families struggled to stay together as their worlds were coming apart.

Exploring race and activism, family, politics, and the radical legacies of the '60s, April tells us her life story - a startling synthesis of documentary realism and imaginative fiction - with "scorching insight on how history both frees and chains us at the same time" (Variety). Co-written and directed by Jessica Blank, co-writer of the hit play The Exonerated, Liberty City sheds light on a dramatic chapter of our history.

If you go: Open's TONIGHT through March 1st at the Carnival Studio at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $40 and are available at the theater box office .
305-949-6722, www.arshtcenter.org, MAP NOW