How it started…
Starting in 2016, when they worked together at The Marsh, Maggie and Wayne sought each other out to argue and discuss what was going on with the world. Whether it was the election or the growing #metoo movement, no topic or point of view went undiscussed.
They developed a vulnerable honesty paired with a mutual respect where they could ask exactly what they were thinking. Because they have two very different lived experiences they learned a lot from each other.
In the Spring of 2019, Wayne called Maggie and asked if she wanted to work on a play together that would center his ongoing persona, Tyrone “Shortleg” Johnson. (They had briefly worked together in 2018 when Wayne was preparing to perform at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee and the collaboration had been a success.) Tyrone “Shortleg” Johnson is a character that Wayne created and has embodied several times over the years with the first full solo show opening in 2012. It was loved by critics and audiences and garnered him a Best of SF Fringe Award.
“Harris is one of those performers who gives audiences a sweaty 110 percent whenever he is onstage.”
- George Heymont, Huffington Post.
Wayne wanted to partner with Maggie on a play that featured Tyrone but was based off of conversations that Maggie and he had had starting in 2016. Maggie was excited and insisted that there be a woman in the play, Wayne quickly agreed and they got to working.
“Jock-a-mo” revolves around Charlie LeBlanc, a young female music producer, and Tyrone “Shortleg” Johnson, a 72 year-old male blues musician, who have been thrust together to finish a song for a Hurricane Katrina Benefit Album. The play weaves together blues music, race relations, gender dynamics, the generational divide and more.
Who we are…
Wayne Harris was born April 4, 1954 in St Louis, Missouri to parents of the Great Migration. He grew up with four siblings and was raised in the church, however at a very young age and even though he had contracted Polio at age 3, Wayne fell in love with the world of Marching Bands and Drum Corps. He followed that passion out to California, pretending to go to college at Los Angeles City College, while marching in the prestigious World Champion Anaheim Kingsmen Drum and Bugle Corps. This experience led Harris to receiving a position in Canada to teach for an all girls Marching Band.
Wayne spent 10 years in Canada teaching, got married, moved back to California, and worked in the school bus industry for 27 years.
At the age of 44, Wayne took his first solo performing class at The Marsh in San Francisco and went on to write multiple shows including Mother’s Milk which ran for 14 weeks in San Francisco and garnered a Fringe Award at the Vancouver International Fringe Festival. In 2012 Wayne was invited by the US State Department to travel to the Middle East and present his play The Letter: Martin Luther King at the Crossroads. In 2017, Wayne was Invited to Jonesborough Tennessee to perform at the prestigious National Storytelling Festival. He is now considered one of the premier storytellers on the West Coast.
In 2016 he met Maggie Wilson.
Maggie Wilson was born December 1, 1990 in Cayucos, California and was raised in the home her great grandfather built. Born the youngest with two older siblings, her father worked in law enforcement as a Deputy District Attorney and her mother as a journalist.
Maggie was always interested in theater. In her early years it manifested as acting but due to an STI diagnosis while studying at UC Berkeley, and by her therapist’s recommendation, she started to write theatrically about stigma, feminism and things that we often ignore. While in college she auditioned for Vagina Monologues with an original monologue and was accepted into an ensemble piece.
In 2016 she met Wayne Harris.
In 2018 Maggie moved to New York to take a position at the Chautauqua Institution to continue her career in Theater Marketing and from there moved to Brooklyn. She currently works Off-Broadway doing Theater Marketing. Her work has been performed in New York City and San Francisco and often deals with mental health, stigma and feminism. She is currently a member of the Artist Co-op, the NYC based writer’s group The Protagonists and a finalist for a Jane Chambers Award.