and with help from a Ford Foundation grant, Ward, actor Robert Hooks and theater manager Gerald Krone officially launched the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967 as a home for Black playwrights, actors and crewmembers., written by Joseph A. Walker, won the Tony Award for best play in 1974, with Ward producing, directing and starring in a Tony-nominated turn as a house painter turned poet.
Based at St. Mark's Playhouse in the East Village, the group also produced the 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, an off-Broadway drama written by Charles Fuller that featured Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson. It also was made into a film and revived on Broadway last year.The First Breeze of Summer"I'm proud of the personnel that we trained and the fact that they're still active in every field of theater, TV and film," Wardlast year.
Born on May 5, 1930, in Burnside, Louisiana, Ward attended Wilberforce University and the University of Michigan before he quit school to come to New York. He appeared in a Circle in the Square Theatre production of, which debuted on Broadway in 1959, he served as an understudy and had a small role. In 1965, a double-bill of his satirical one-act comedies had a long run off-Broadway and earned him a Drama Desk Award for outstanding new playwright.. He also appeared on television in
the negro ensemble company
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