ProShop
Wayne Harris is an award winning solo performer, writer, educator, curriculum innovator and musician. A gifted artist with wide ranging interests, he has accumulated an impressive body of work over the years that includes 7 full length plays, presentations for schools, directing and designing for pageantry groups as well as various musical projects.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Harris’ work has often centered on his childhood, as in his first play “Mother’s Milk” which ran in San Francisco for 14 weeks and won awards in Canada at the Vancouver International Fringe Festival. A powerful piece that combined an homage to his mother, and a nuanced picture of St. Louis during the early days of the civil rights movement.
In “Train Stories”, he turned to fiction, drawing a portrait of the south and the struggle of African-Americans railroad workers post WWII. This play met critical acclaim and had a very successful run at The Marsh Theatre in San Francisco, one of the nation’s premier venues for solo performance.
His third play “The May Day Parade” saw a return to his autobiographical writing and included a textured story about his first love: drum and bugle corps, as well as his childhood battle with polio and a vibrant rendering of a St. Louis African-American institution, the May Day Parade.
Invited by the US State Department to present a piece commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” , Wayne travelled to the Middle East to perform “The Letter; Martin Luther King at the Crossroads” to Palestinian students, storytellers and children’s reading advocates in such places as Jerusalem, Jericho, Ramallah and a special performance for Consul General Michael Ratney and his guests at the Consulate General of Jerusalem
During all of this, Wayne Harris has been involved with some of the country’s best Marching Arts groups. He has taught and directed many world class drum and bugle corps, winterguards and band programs throughout the nation, adjudicates pageantry events and currently offers performance workshops to all types of youth performing groups.
Wayne has been working with the highly acclaimed San Francisco Marsh Youth Theater (MYT) as director and creator of original performance projects for students.
