Wayne Harris
The May Day Parade
A Solo Performance Spotlight Masterpiece
Originally aired May 2 and 3, 2020
Watch it on YouTube!
“The May Day Parade” is a solo performance that tells the story of an 8-year-old’s experience watching and marching in the iconic St. Louis event “The Annie Malone May Day Parade”. It is an intimate story of family and faith as well as a story of a proud and vibrant community in the mid-1960s.
Presented in Cooperation with Paramount Winter Guard!
You can support the fine work of Atlanta’s premiere Youth Performance Ensemble by purchasing some of their fine merchandise. Help them keep the beat marching on and on!
The story is populated by vivid characters ranging from a grandmother of biblical proportions to a slightly inebriated church deacon/drill instructor to the entire Sumner High School marching band! It is a joyful and inspiring story set against the backdrop of the early civil rights movement, the post-WWII migration of African-Americans to the north, and a changing American landscape.
The work embodies the black experience in America while affirming the universal truths that are the foundations of all races. Honesty, hard work, and the indomitable human spirit are explored and displayed through character, story, and song.
Biography
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 5 full-length plays, presentations for schools, directing and designing for pageantry groups as well as various musical projects.
In 2013, Wayne was asked by the U, S. State Department to perform and do storytelling workshops in Jerusalem and the West Bank, where he premiered his piece about Martin Luther King in Birmingham “The Letter”.
Since then, Wayne Harris’ latest play “Mother’s Milk; A Blues Riff in Three Acts” has played to enthusiastic audiences winning “Best of the Fringe” at the 2014 San Francisco International Fringe Festival and ran for 14 weeks in Berkeley, CA.
Solo Performance Spotlight Shows
