Douglas Turner Ward Biography Favorites Color Red Food Red Beans and Rice & Gumbo Vacation Spot New Orleans, Louisiana

Negro Ensemble Company co-founder, actor, director, and playwright Douglas Turner Ward was born Roosevelt Ward, Jr. on May 5, 1930 in Burnside, Louisiana. Ward is a descendant of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan. His great, great, great-grandmother, Elnora, owned by slave owner Nathan Forrest, bore a child with him. Ward's parents, Roosevelt Ward and Dorothy Short Ward were field hands, but they owned their own tailoring business. Raised in New Orleans, Louisiana and attending Xavier Prep High School, Ward graduated in 1946 at the age of sixteen. He then attended Wilberforce University in 1946, where he performed in two plays, Thunder Rock and A Shot In The Dark and discovered his ambition to be a sportswriter. Wilberforce began to lose its accreditation, Ward transferred to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he played football his freshman year. Ward subsequently quit the football team. In 1949, Ward decided that he wanted to leave college altogether. At the age of nineteen, Ward went to New York City.

In New York, Ward became politically involved and worked as a journalist. He, then, decided to become a playwright and studied at the Paul Mann Workshop in New York City. In 1956, he began his off-Broadway career as an actor in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. He went on to perform and understudy for a part in A Raisin In The Sun. In 1965, Ward, Robert Hooks, and Gerald Krone formed the Negro Ensemble Company. Ward made his playwriting debut that same year with Happy Ending/Day of Absence. In 1967, the Negro Ensemble Company was officially opened with Ward serving as artistic director. Some of the company's notable productions include A Soldier's Playand The River Niger. The River Niger became the company's first play to go to Broadway. It also won a Tony Award for Best Play. Ward has gone on to write other plays including, The Reckoning and Brotherhood.

As a result of Ward's and others' hard work, the Negro Ensemble Company has produced more than two hundred plays and been a place for Black actors to gain experience and prominence in the theatre. Some notable actors who have worked with the Negro Ensemble Company include Louis Gossett, Jr., Phylicia Rashad and Sherman Hemsley.

Ward's involvement with the Negro Ensemble Company continues today.

Ward was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on June 10, 2005.