Douglas turner ward biography samples
We created a body of work that now exists as living proof of the vitality and greatness of our black playwriting talent..
Douglas Turner Ward, who passed away at his home in New York City of natural causes on February 20, 2021, was a driving force in the evolution of the Black Theater movement in America.
Born May 5, 1930 in Burnside, Louisiana, he was the only son of Roosevelt and Dorothy Ward, who worked the rice and sugarcane fields of a plantation there.
Ward's work and life as an actor, writer, director and creator of the Negro Ensemble.
During his early childhood, Ward’s family moved to New Orleans. In 1946, at the age of 16, he graduated from Xavier Prep High School. Determined to leave the South because he was a “natural rebel against segregation,” he enrolled at Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio.
Joining a drama club, he performed in two plays, Thunder Rock and A Shot in the Dark. When Wilberforce lost its accreditation the next year, Ward transferred to the University of Michigan, hoping to realize an athletic ambition while playing on the freshman football team.
Meanwhile, he discovered world literature at the campus library and also, during extracurricular activity,