Wayne Harris (Playwright/Performer) is an award-winning solo performer, writer, educator, curriculum innovator and musician. His plays include Mother’s Milk, The May Day Parade and Jockamo. His last production Train Stories was critically acclaimed earning a Bay Area Broadway nomination and an extended sold-out run. A gifted artist with wide ranging interests Wayne is passionate about storytelling that combines his lived experience with hopeful declarations for the future. Wayne was invited by the U.S. State Department to travel to the Middle East and perform his play, The Letter; Martin Luther King at the Crossroads. Having just retired from being Program Director for The Marsh Youth Theater in San Francisco,  serving underprivileged students in after-school programs, Wayne now travels extensively throughout the U.S. providing “Improvisation & Performance” workshops for Youth Pageantry groups (marching bands, dance teams etc.) In addition, he is currently a facilitator for FIPPP, an exciting and important project guiding formerly incarcerated adults in creating, producing and performing their stories and partnering with Berkeley Rep in bringing storytelling to programs in San Francisco Jails.

October 11th – The Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performance Project (FIPPP) 
Directed and produced by Mark Kenward, with co-direction by Rebecca Fisher, Wayne Harris and Mark McGoldrick, FIPPP features formerly incarcerated performers telling stories about their life experiences.  Hearing stories from those who have been incarcerated fosters compassion and understanding about the circumstances and choices that led them to incarceration, what they endured and learned inside, and the hard won success of their lives after incarceration. Their stories give hope for the human condition and our ability to reform and reinvent ourselves, as well as giving us the opportunity as a society to reconsider
the inhumane conditions that prisoners often endure. This project is funded in part by a Theater Bay Area CA$H grant, the Ronald Whittier Family Foundation and donors who enjoy the work. We were pleased to receive a grant from the Alameda County Arts Commission Arts Fund in 2022 and a CA$H Sustains Grant from Theater Bay Area in 2024.
Members of the FIPPP, Christina Aanestad and Pharaoh Brooks, will participate in a Talk Back after the October 11th performance of Drapetomania.
Website: https://www.fippp.org/about.html

October 25th – INDIVISIBLE EAST BAY
Indivisible East Bay (IEB) is a grassroots community group founded in 2017, in conjunction with Indivisible National. We are working to expand and protect our democracy and enact a progressive legislative agenda. We do this by influencing our representatives in government, advocating for policies that advance economic, racial, gender, and environmental justice, participating in electoral work, and allying with groups across the country to protect our rights and build a vibrant, participatory democracy and a better future for all. Indivisible National was instrumental in organizing the recent “No Kings” rallies across the country and are continuing that work on local and national levels.
IEB is once again pleased to collaborate with Wayne Harris and his play Drapetomania
inviting our members to experience this powerful production as well having Jessica Rothharr
from the IEB Steering Committee giving a “Talk Back” after the October 25th performance.
Website: https://indivisibleeb.org/