now 2024 - 2025 Upcoming
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now 2024 - 2025 Upcoming 〰️
A friend and frequent collaborator of SoMad's, Lester Mayers's performance style animates and elevates poetic language from page to stage. Exile: The Final Love Poem not only marks the conclusion of Mayers's poetry in concert series, but also promises to transport us beyond imagination with live instrumentations in collaboration with talented artists Brandon Bera, Matt Carvin, Keturah Jordan, and Christopher James Talio. Special guest Arewà Basit is joining the lineup as the show stopping opening performer. Mayers plans to retire from performance following this show, making this a can't-miss event!
NEW Dream Of Love.
A Sex Poetry concert Film.
Feb. 2023.
Storyteller, Lester walks deeper into the physical space, sex, and a state of mind related to a lover you can't seem to shake while incorporating a meditative practice; everyone will leave the theater practicing themselves.
Featuring Brandon Bera, Keturah Jordan, and Matt Carvin, the four collective offers everyone a unique excursion, replete with dramatic pauses that stroke anticipation, then releases a torrent of poetry-music fire. A New Dream Of Love; Live With Lester flourishes in a format that goes beyond his previous approach to music and poetry.
"For me, and everyone that comes to experience this show, everyone that works on the show, my bleeding hope is that we all walk away with our souls stitched together. So we can start to do a little bit more than survive, and we can officially say and own what Beyonce strongly stated in Renaissance, "These Mother Fuckers Ain't Stopping Me!" -Mayers.
Eye to Eye; Soul to Soul:
A Play for pbs.
2023.
Lester Eugene Mayers (pronouns: anything that comes from a respectful place) has written a PBS-produced fictional documentary; entitled “Eye to Eye; Soul to Soul” honoring Maya Angelou and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, which is airing in January 2023 on PBS.
“The original story is that Maya Angelou cannot confess to James Baldwin that she loves her husband. Angelou is the last name that she got from her husband, who is white. It was Baldwin that said to her, ‘Maya, you say you have courage but you lack the courage to say that you love this man who brings you so much joy.’ And now, the King was assassinated on Maya’s 40th birthday. What if I reimagined that he never got on that plane to Memphis, but instead went to her birthday party,” says Mayers. “So I put those two in a room, and I made them have a conversation.”