Lester Eugene Mayers

Director • Writer • Performance Artist • Playwright • Dramaturg • Choreographer • Educator

Lester Eugene Mayers is a Brooklyn-born multidisciplinary artist, theatre director, playwright, poet, choreographer, dramaturg, and educator whose body of work explores the intersections of Black identity, queerness, memory, love, survival, and the complexities of the human experience. Rooted in an unapologetic commitment to storytelling, his artistic practice moves between theatrical realism, poetic experimentation, movement, and documentary performance, creating work that challenges convention while centering voices and histories too often relegated to the margins.

An MFA graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Mayers has built a career spanning professional theatre, higher education, literary arts, and interdisciplinary performance. In 2023, he was named the inaugural Artist in Residence at Ramapo College, where he subsequently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre. His academic and artistic affiliations include SUNY New Paltz and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, alongside an extensive record of teaching, directing, performing, and facilitating creative work at institutions across the country.

His theatrical practice is distinguished by an interest in the relationship between language, the body, and collective memory. Among his recent projects is CATCH, a docu-poetic theatrical work examining HIV, stigma, family, and survival, presented at SUNY New Paltz in 2026. His theatrical work also includes MAMA/RUN, a choreopoem exploring the possibilities of storytelling through movement, spoken language, and ensemble performance, with public presentations scheduled for October 2026. Across these projects, Mayers continues to develop a theatrical vocabulary in which poetry becomes action, movement becomes testimony, and the stage becomes a site of remembrance, confrontation, and transformation.

Mayers is currently developing PAY ATTENTION, a new journalistic theatre project examining adult illiteracy, educational inequity, and the complicated relationship between literacy, identity, shame, and survival in contemporary America. Set within a multigenerational adult literacy classroom, the work brings together individuals whose personal histories challenge conventional understandings of intelligence, opportunity, and the American educational system. Blending investigative research, heightened theatrical realism, and deeply human storytelling, PAY ATTENTION seeks to illuminate the lives of those whose struggles with literacy often remain invisible. Workshops and public presentations are projected to begin in 2027, marking the next chapter in Mayers' continued exploration of theatre as an instrument of testimony, social inquiry, and collective understanding.

In spring 2024, Mayers released his debut studio poetry album, Exile: The Final Love Poem, accompanied by a live concert at SoMad and a poetic lookbook. The project marked a deliberate closing of one chapter of his literary practice and an expansion of his creative interests beyond conventional poetic forms. On World AIDS Day 2025, he published Tomorrow 12:01, a docu-poetic collection honoring more than one hundred stories of individuals living with or affected by HIV, extending his commitment to documenting lives, preserving testimony, and confronting cultural silence.

Mayers first gained significant recognition with 100 Poems for 100 Voices, a debut collection that inspired a sold-out poetry tour and a companion album released across major streaming platforms, including Spotify, iTunes, and Tidal. The project earned four awards, including the Visionary Award from the National Advancement of Colored Women Organization, as well as two New York State proclamations. His subsequent literary works include African Booty Scratcha (2019) and A Spring of Gay-Black-Feminine Joy (2021), further establishing his distinct engagement with Black masculinity, sexuality, personal history, and artistic liberation.

In collaboration with SoMad.NYC, Mayers premiered the visual archive Love Lessons With Lester in 2021 and returned in December 2022 with New Dream of Love, a four-night, sold-out sex-poetry concert exploring intimacy, vulnerability, eroticism, and the politics of desire.

His work has been presented, developed, and shared through a range of academic and cultural institutions, including The Guthrie Theater, The Playwrights' Center, Pace University, Delta State University, the Nuyorican Poets Café, Denizen Theatre, Unframed Artist Gallery, SUNY New Paltz, Ramapo College, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Whether working in a classroom, rehearsal room, on the page, or before a live audience, Mayers remains committed to an artistic philosophy that treats storytelling as both an act of creation and a responsibility to memory. His work insists upon the visibility of complicated lives, the dignity of overlooked experiences, and the transformative possibilities of performance.