A Very Scrumpy Holiday Carol

Wayne Harris (Co-Creator /Ghost of Holiday Present) is an award-winning solo performer, writer, educator, curriculum innovator, and musician. His plays include Mother’s Milk, The May Day Parade, Jockamo, and Drapetomania. His recent production Train Stories was critically acclaimed, earning a BroadwayWorld San Francisco Awards nomination and a sold-out extended run at The Marsh. A gifted artist, Harris is passionate about storytelling that combines his lived experience with hopeful declarations for the future. Harris 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. Retired from being program director for The Marsh Youth Theater in San Francisco, which served underprivileged students in after-school programs, Harris now travels extensively throughout the U.S. providing “Improvisation & Performance” workshops for Youth Pageantry groups. He is currently a facilitator for Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performance Project (FIPPP), a project guiding formerly incarcerated adults in creating, producing and performing their stories, partnered with Berkeley Repertory Theatre in bringing storytelling to programs in San Francisco County jails.

Candace Johnson (Singer) is a singer, actress, poet, voice instructor, and director of the University of California Berkeley’s Gospel Choir. She is also a voice coach for the Formally Incarcerated People’s Performance Project (FIPPP), a theater organization supporting artists impacted by incarceration. Johnson excels in opera, musical theater, gospel, and jazz. In 2018, she premiered her first one-woman show, VOX in a BOX, a musical biography about discovering her voice. Most recently, she performed Scat-ter Brain, the Music of ADHD at The Marsh. She has written and performed seven original shows and continues to create new works.

Kathy Kennedy (Singer) enjoys singing in a variety of Bay area bands, including Big Bang Beat, Sonic Highway, and Randy Craig & Friends; singing jazz, pop, Motown & R & B. As a lead singer in Big Bang Beat, one of San Francisco’s most sought-after party bands, Kathy has performed before thousands at events around the world. As a back-up singer, she has sung with Bonnie Raitt, Ronnie Spector (The Ronettes) Elvin Bishop, and Eddie Money. She also toured with Mickey Thomas’ Starship, singing lead on Grace Slick’s White Rabbit and Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now. Co-owner of The Voice Studio in San Francisco, Kathy also teaches voice and has a thriving teaching practice in the Bay Area.

Debi Mason (Singer) is a playwright, actor, poet, director and storyteller with over 35 years of experience working in the arts. She is a member of the National Association of Black Storytellers, is the founder of Oby House Tellers and a founding former member of the Black Storytellers of San Diego. Her stories include African folktales and original tales for children, spiritual poems and verse for women of color and uses the art of story to bridge gaps among people of color, diverse religions, ethnicities and ages by capturing their stories for performance. Hadithi! Storytelling workshops take participants on a journey from Beneath the Baobab to Porch Songs as she shares the basics of telling a good story using body movement, voice, music and imagination. Debi is also the current president of the Berkeley Branch of the California Writers Club.

Doug McKechnie (Santa Claus) is a musician, known for his work with the Moog synthesizer,  creating The San Francisco Synthesizer Ensemble-1984, a group of composers who created an international sensation by playing the Golden Gate Bridge as a musical instrument during the bridge’s 50th Anniversary celebration in 1987.  An active participant in the San Francisco Bay Area’s creative community, he is widely respected for a varied arts performance and administration career. McKechnie plays solo piano and sings with the Craig & McGregor Band. He is also one of the best Santa’s ever!

Joyful Raven (Co-Creator/Scrump) is an award-winning actor and director celebrated for her bold, deeply human solo work who has spent the last two decades creating original performances. Her hit solo comedy Tales of a Sexual Tomboy was hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “one of the funniest shows now on display on Bay Area stages,” winning Best of the Fringe at the 2016 San Francisco International Fringe Festival before an Off-Broadway run in 2017. Her latest show, Breed or Bust, earned five stars from Theatre Weekly UK at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, where it was nominated for an Offie, and received a Producer’s Encore Award, a gold medal from TV-olution, and a Best Comedy nomination at the 2022 Hollywood Fringe. Raven has directed and mentored hundreds of storytellers, co-founded the award-winning Rococo Risqué, co-authored four plays with the Prize of Hope-winning Human Nature, and teaches solo theater at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre School of Theatre.

Karen Ripley (Ghost of Holiday Past) has been performing for over 35 years as a comic and improviser. She came on to the gay comedy scene in 1977 in San Francisco. From the cover of the East Bay Express (Berkeley, CA) with Whoopi Goldberg to Ms. Magazine’s top 100 Lesbian Comics 2009.  2005 SF Fringe Best Musical Comedy with Annie Larson in the original play Show Me Where It Hurts, and 2006 Diva Festival with Waiting for FEMA. Ripley has traveled all over the USA and the Caribbean. Featured in Logo’s Wisecracks episode 2. And from coast to coast making the LGBT community laugh. Ripley’s original show Oh No There’s Men On the Land, received Theatre Eddy’s Top 5 Solo Shows in 2015, San Francisco Bay Area.

Holly Shaw (Ghost of Holiday Future) has spent a lifetime on stage, T.V. and film as an actor, starring in the ABC Afterschool Special, Love Hurts, hosting the televised Edinburgh Revue, then becoming a professional dancer and later a coach and hypnotherapist. She has helped thousands of artists with performance anxiety and creative blocks, taught at SAG/AFTRA conservatories in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and her podcast, Performers & Creators Lab was named One of the Most Outstanding Podcasts of 2019 by Databird. Her first book, The Creative Formula, became an Amazon bestseller and is now taught in universities around the world. Shaw is currently a sought-after stand-up comedian and storyteller who regularly performs at comedy clubs and showcases all over Northern CA. She just published her third book, Queen Lessons: What Stand-Up Comedy Taught Me About Dealing with Life’s Hecklers. Currently Shaw is working on her one-woman show called, Roar! www.HollyShawComedy.com

Unique Derique aka Lance McGee (St Peter/Clown) is a longtime San Francisco Bay Area favorite whose dual careers merge the performing arts and healing with the belief that the world can be a brighter place, one breath—and one laugh—at a time.  The Clown Prince’s artistic side comes out to play with classic physical comedy whose performances have included It’s Showtime at the Apollo, the Disney Channel, and KQED’s Spark, and Derique has shared the stage with entertainers such as Bobby McFerrin, The Temptations, Laura Nyro, Tuck and Patti, Lou Rawls, and Sammy Davis, Jr.   When not bringing joy to all ages as a professional clown, his alter-ego Lance McGee is a Trauma-Informed Wellness Consultant, Drama Therapist, and Mindfulness Coach providing support to Oakland middle-school educators, administrators, staff, and students. He also leads on-going Trauma-informed training throughout the Bay Area for nonprofit organizations working with youth.

Stephanie Weisman (Creator/Mistress of Ceremonies) is the founder and current artistic/executive director of The Marsh. Under her guidance, The Marsh has expanded from a weekly performance series to producing more than 500 performances annually on its San Francisco and Berkeley stages. Her contributions have been recognized with the Jerry Friedman Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle (SFBATCC) and designation as a Local Hero by the SF Bay Guardian. Her performances include, her masters thesis, DanceMasters, the opera Aphrodisia and two solo performance musicals, Breed & Rescue and Planet DoReMi. Her latest play, 180 Days. To Die. To Live. played at The Marsh in 2024. Her upcoming SongCycle Memoir will take place at The Marsh on April 26, 2026.

Musicians

Randy Craig, Musical Director/Pianist, hit town in San Francisco in 1969 to audition as an actor with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. They took him. He Worked with R.G. Davis and Sandra Archer among other amazing people. They soon asked him to write music for the plays. And the rest is history with more than fifty scores for theater and film including one of the best 10 shows of the year, Scapin. He was a founding Member of the Pickle Family Circus and San Francisco Make*A*Circus. He has been nominated for an Academy Award nomination and was awarded an OBIE, A Bay Area Critics’ Circle Award, Best of San Francisco Fringe (twice). He has been a teacher at. Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, San Francisco State, Contra Costa College and the Community Music Center. He has been the band leader at The Marsh Berkeley Cabaret for the past 13 years.

The Band

12/17 Robbie MacGregor (guitar), John McArdle (bass), Jack Dorsey (drums)

12/19 Bryan Bowman (drums), John McArdle (bass), Dave Bell (guitar)

12/20 Alex Baum (bass), Gerry Kennett (drums), guitarist – TBA

Coming soon!