BIOgraphy

Lamar Perry is a Queer Black director, producer, and educator originally from Connecticut. Perry is a nationally renowned new play director and also currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Directing at UC San Diego. Course offerings include graduate directing and acting, Queer Black Drama, and Black Theater History. He is the 2025 recipient of the Teaching Award from the African and African-American Studies Research Center. Prior to his tenure at UC San Diego Lamar served as Associate Producer at the Tony-award winning Old Globe, and also previously served as Producing Associate at The Classical Theatre of Harlem. He is a member of the Roundabout’s Leon Levy Foundations Directors Group Cohort 2 and a two-time finalist for the National Black Theater: Soul Directing Residency. Lamar is a 2024 recipient of both of the Hellman Fellowship and a Faculty Career Development Grant for his adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde entitled Dorian, a Black Queer reimagining of the popular title. Up next Lamar will direct the World-Premiere of When We Are Found by Donja R. Love at Penumbra in Spring 2025. This Fall he will lend his new play development talents as Dramaturg to the world-premiere of Rudi Goblen’s Littleboy/Littleman at The Geffen Playhouse! Winter 2026 Perry will tackle the classic swashbuckling action comedy The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas adapted by Catherine Bush in the Mandell Weiss Theatre as part of UCSD T+D’s 25/26 season. Last summer Perry, under the direction of Malika Oyetimein, was Associate Director on a developmental production What Will Happen To All That Beauty Part 1 & 2 by Donja R. Love at the Contemporary American Theater Festival. Recent workshops include: Pure Glitter by Douglas Lyons at Diversionary Theater and Rise & Beings by Rudi Goblen (2023 Colman Domingo Award) at The Vineyard, Lonnie’s Lament by Mylan Gray at Cygnet, and You Can Tell from the Twisted Juniper by Marissa Joyce Stamps at The National Black Theatre . Other recent directing credits include; Dead Girls Quinceañera by Phanesiá Pharel (UCSD Wagner New Play Festival), Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Old Globe/USD MFA Acting Program), Thicker Than by Agyeiwaa Asante (UCSD Wagner New Play Festival) the world-premiere of Mansa Ra’s New York Times Critics pick …what the end will be (Associate Director/Roundabout), Animals Out of Paper by Rajiv Joseph (Chautauqua Theater Company), and recently he christened Detroit Public Theatre’s brand new home with his production of Mud Row by Dominique Morisseau (winner of a Wilde Award for Best Direction of a Play). Prior to COVID-19 shutdown he also served as assistant director, under longtime friend/mentor Steve H. Broadnax III, on the off-broadway world premiere of Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King (2021 Pulitzer Prize in Drama) at the Signature. Lamar has developed new work at The Old Globe, Penumbra Theatre, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, National Black Theater, Diversionary Theatre/Spark Festival, UCSD/Wagner’s New Play Festival, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Chautauqua, San Diego Repertory Theater, Cygnet Theatre, and The Classical Theatre of Harlem. They hold a Bachelor of Science from St. John’s University and are an alum of both the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Public Allies Connecticut (AmeriCorps). They are a lover of new play development, as well as cultural adaptations of classical texts. Proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. This is totally a Whitney Elizabeth Houston stan account.