now 2023 - 2024 Upcoming

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now 2023 - 2024 Upcoming 〰️

Swallow From Both Ends; An Experience Not Written From A Distance is an amplified soldier of sexual reclamation. It is a choreopoem that dives deep into the healing process of six non-gender-specific Black bodies overcoming sexual trauma, body dysmorphia, and wounds of emotional manipulation; while measuring the thin line between pleasure and pain. All characters are Black, genderless, and liberated within their sexuality. It uses the many Black vernaculars to vessel each character to a safe place of healing.

Swallow From Both Ends; An Experience Not Written From A Distance is Mayers first masterful theater piece, originally written in 2019-2020. In 2021 it earned Mayers a Many Voices Fellowship at the Playwrights Center, furthering its development through workshops and dramaturgical analysis.

Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies,

Main Stage Production at suny new paltz .

fall 2023.

Mayers will direct and dramaturge Chisolm’s Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies, at SUNY New Paltz Main Stage production in the Fall of ‘23.

Marquis and Tru are both fourteen-year-old black boys, but they exist in two totally different worlds. Marquis is a booksmart prep-schooler living in the affluent suburb of Achievement Heights, while Tru is a street-savvy kid from deep within the inner city of Baltimore. Their worlds overlap one day in a holding cell. Tru decides that Marquis has lost his "blackness" and pens a how-to manual entitled "Being Black for Dummies." He assumes the role of professor, but Marquis proves to be a reluctant pupil. They butt heads, debate, wrestle and ultimately prove that Nietzsche and 2pac were basically saying the same thing.

Virtual Dance Classes

Guthrie Theater.

Dates: TBA, Spring 2024.

Lester Mayers leads a revolutionary masterclass that empowers you with the moving tools to reclaim your story through embodied movement.

In this series, we will explore:

The many styles of embodied story-telling are derivative of the many styles of Black music and dance.


Level: Advance.

Instructor: Lester Mayers


Location: Guthrie Theater, Zoom.

Class Fee: TBA.

You will receive an email receipt upon completion of your order. The Guthrie Education Department will send additional information about your programming prior to your start date. If you have questions please email classes@guthrietheater.org or call 612.225.6134.

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.”