[2][3] For his bar mitzvah, he asked his parents for a movie camera and received a Super 8 single lens with a zoom.

Mayer also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical for both Spring Awakening and Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Mayer directed and co-wrote the book for the Green Day-inspired musical American Idiot (which premiered in 2009 at Berkeley Rep and transferred to Broadway in 2010), based on the band's album of the same name.

After directing on- and off-Broadway for more than 15 years, Mayer made his feature-film directorial debut with A Home at the End of the World, starring Colin Farrell and Robin Wright Penn, in 2004.

He directed the pilot and three subsequent episodes of NBC's TV series Smash, which were broadcast starting in February 2012.

[10] Mayer made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2012 with Rigoletto; he reset the scene from 16th-century Mantua to 1960s Las Vegas.