about
BIO
James Mercer II is a multi-hyphenate Soulanni theatre artist and educator from the Philadelphia area, now crafting bold, genre-bending work in the Bay Area. Seduced by story, the human condition, and the surreal, James treats theatre as excavation—pulling texts apart to reveal what throbs beneath the page, with a pointed devotion to Black and queer narratives.
Their directorial debut arrived with ShaXspeare Reimagined, a collaborative Afro-Futurist remix of Shakespeare that James conceived and led alongside five fellow directors. They followed with the critically acclaimed Les Blancs, a boundary-breaking production featuring an all-Black-women cast and a ferocious interrogation of power, identity, and resistance.
As an actor, James has earned a reputation as a shapeshifter—an artist who disappears fully into each role, transforming radically from one character to the next. Their work spans the most nefarious of beings to the most noble, marked by a fearless physicality, psychological precision, and a refusal to repeat themselves.
Grounded in a belief that theatre should activate as much as it heals, James makes work meant to unshackle inherited chains, rupture expectation, and stretch the limits of what the stage can hold.