Douglas Turner Ward

Home > People > Literature and the Arts > Theater: Biographies

Ward, Douglas Turner (b. 1930), actor, playwright, director, and manager. The multitalented African‐American artist was born in Burnside, Louisiana, and educated at Wilberforce University and the University of Michigan before studying acting in New York with Paul Mann. Ward made his professional debut Off Broadway in 1957 and his Broadway bow in the cast of A Raisin in the Sun (1959). His twin bill of the one‐acts Happy Ending and Day of Absence (1965) launched Ward's playwriting career and he acted in the latter, playing the Mayor who wakes up one morning to find that all the “Negroes” in his town have disappeared. In 1968 Ward and Robert Hooks founded the Negro Ensemble Company, the most famous and long‐lasting black theatre group in New York theatre history. Ward wrote and directed many of the company's productions over the years, sometimes acting in them as well. Among his many captivating performances were the former hoofer Russell B.Parker making ends meet in his barbershop in Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (1969), the Harlem house painter Johnny Williams who dreams of writing one perfect poem in The River Niger (1973), the wrongly discharged Sergeant Major Saunders in The Brownsville Raid (1976), and the illiterate short‐order cook Louie in love with an educated woman in Louie and Ophelia (1986).