[3] When his family moved to Maryland in the wake of difficulties resulting from his participation in anti-war demonstrations,[4][5] Mays became heavily involved in the Baltimore experimental theater scene and, at the age of eighteen, began directing at the Corner Theatre ETC.

Mays' 2008 motion picture romantic comedy The Watermelon premiered at the San Diego Film Festival, where it quickly achieved the top slot for audience and industry buzz.

On June 6, 2011, Brad Mays discussed his personal and working relationship with his late wife Lorenda Starfelt – who had died of uterine cancer earlier that year – with blog radio host John Smart.

In the interview, which Smart described on his website as "harsh, truthful and brutally honest," Mays revealed the closeness of his artistic collaboration with Starfelt, as well as his reasons for considering their 2010 documentary film co-production The Audacity of Democracy to have been "unsuccessful...incomplete, inconclusive, ultimately unsatisfying and even embarrassing.

Shot for the most part in and around Princeton, the film tells the story of Matt Lipton (Adam Roth), a widowed man in his early 60s who enters into a misbegotten romantic relationship with a pretentious would-be "townie" named Missy Taylor (Kristin Jann-Fischer).

I was able to fulfill that dream for her in the movie, and tie it in with the narrative in a way that I find very satisfying.” [30] Ironically, the film's star Adam Roth also succumbed to cancer in the final stages of production, necessitating extensive rewrites and additional shooting.

[44][45] According to the film's IMdB listing: "Two Trentons" is a hard-hitting look at a city desperate to redefine itself - through art, music, education, and prison reform - from its all-too-familiar image as a blighted, urban lost cause of decay, violence, hopelessness and moral decline.

Featuring numerous interviews with city planners, clergymen, scientists, mental health professionals, artists, musicians, educators, and non-profit volunteers, the experiences of the people who live, work and struggle in Trenton are movingly expressed with eloquence and urgency."

[52] In 2020, Mays directed the experimental music video Leviathan, for Detroit producer Blake Harrington, and worked as cinematographer for the educational film The Rags of Time: J. Robert Oppenheimer for director Patricia Robinson-Linder.

[54] An early newspaper article about the film described it as "a cautionary tale vividly told through the eyes of the town’s residents and business owners, educators and elected officials, both old-timers and newcomers.

Mays' Off-Broadway presentation of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz's The Water Hen, [68][69][70][71] was videotaped by the Lincoln Center's Billy Rose Theatre Collection for inclusion in their permanent archive.

[72] In Los Angeles, Mays' original adaptation of Euripides' The Bacchae was nominated for three LA Weekly Theatre Awards (including Best Direction) in 1997 [73] and also videotaped for the Lincoln Center's archive.

Dragon Slayers was performed in both New York and Los Angeles over a period of several years, featuring an original electronic score contributed by Garth Hudson of the late sixties rock group The Band.

[87] In 2022, Brad Mays returned to the theater following an 18-year hiatus when he agreed to direct the New York premiere of I Babysat Jesus, a one-woman show written by and starring Mary Elizabeth Barrett.