Douglas Turner Ward Dies: Co-Founder Of Pioneering Negro Ensemble Company Was 90

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Douglas Turner Ward, the director, actor and playwright who co-founded the landmark, influential Off Broadway Black theater group the Negro Ensemble Company, died Saturday, Feb. 20, at his home in …

His death was announced by his wife Diana Ward.

Ward had already begun a solid New York stage acting career in the 1950s and ’60s – including Off Broadway roles in, he wrote a 1966 editorial for that newspaper headlined “American Theater: For Whites Only?” The article called for the establishment of a Black repertory theater company. Turner wrote, “Not in the future…but now!”A year later the Ford Foundation awarded a $434,000 grant to create the Negro Ensemble Company with Ward as artistic director, along with Robert Hooks and Gerald S.

The Company’s contribution to Black theater is immense. Indeed, theater, TV and film as we know them today would be inconceivable without Ward’s inspiration: An abridged roster of the Negro Ensemble Company’s alumni includes Debbie Allen, John Amos, Angela Bassett, Roscoe Lee Browne, Adolph Caesar, Godfrey Cambridge, Rosalind Cash, Keith David, Giancarlo Esposito, Antonio Fargas, Laurence Fishburne, Frances Foster, Al Freeman, Jr., Danny Glover, Louis Gossett, Jr.

“A true renaissance man…actor, playwright, director, mentor to so many young actors [and] creatives of color,” tweeted David Alan Grier, a current Tony Award nominee for his featured performance in the 2020 Broadway revival of. “Doug told me years ago ‘It’s nice that you make money in Hollywood but don’t forget the theatre you must always come back.'”playwright Jeremy O.

 

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