CATCH at SUNY New Paltz Theater

Written by Lester Eugene Mayers and receiving its world premiere at SUNY New Paltz, CATCH grows out of the emotional and testimonial world of Mayers’ earlier work, Tomorrow at 12:01, expanding that material into a living theatrical event built from the voices and experiences of real people impacted by HIV. Blending poetry, movement, music, testimony, memory, and ensemble storytelling, the play refuses to reduce HIV to tragedy. Instead, it asks audiences to witness the fullness of lives too often flattened by statistics: people who laughed, f*cked, prayed, fought, loved badly, loved beautifully, built families, buried friends, survived stigma, and demanded to be remembered as more than a diagnosis.

At the center of CATCH is a question of inheritance: What do we owe the people who survived long enough for us to be here, and what do we do with the stories of those who did not? Moving across generations, the play brings the living into conversation with ancestors, chosen family, lovers, mothers, and ghosts, revealing the ways Black and queer communities have always created systems of care when the larger world failed them.

For Mayers, bringing CATCH to SUNY New Paltz for its world premiere carries particular weight. Returning to his alma mater not simply as an alumnus, but as a playwright introducing a new work to the world, transforms the production into its own kind of homecoming, a chance to place Black queer history, HIV testimony, and radical love at the center of the stage where another generation of artists is being formed.

CATCH is not interested in asking audiences to pity its characters. It asks us to know them.