Day of Absence / Happy Ending

• Day of Absence / Happy Ending premiered Off-Broadway as a double-bill of two one-act plays at the St. Mark's Playhouse in New York in the fall of 1965. The show was a hit, running for 504 performances over 15 months, enduring through the 1966 transit strike. It earned Ward a Drama Desk Award for outstanding new playwright.
• That same year, Ward authored an opinion piece in The New York Times titled "American Theater: For Whites Only?" The piece garnered him a grant from W. McNeil Lowry of the Ford Foundation.
• Day of Absence is an often performed and revived play, from community and school productions to off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City.
• Ward was one of the founders of the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967, and served for many years as its artistic director.
  • The company notably produced The River Niger (1972), which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1974 and was adapted as a film of the same name two years later. Ward himself acted in and directed that play, receiving a nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
  • The company also produced Home (1979) by Samm-Art Williams and A Soldier's Play (1981) by Charles Fuller. The latter won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was adapted into the film A Soldier's Story.
• Ward published The Haitian Chronicles in March 2020, having worked on the three-play series for around four decades. He viewed the series, which focused on the Haitian Revolution, as his magnum opus and intended to have it staged by NEC alumni.
• Among his numerous awards and honors, Ward received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award.
• In 1996, Ward was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

“Laughter can be as effective as anger in telling white America what [Douglas Turner Ward] has on his mind.”

The message underlying the Happy Ending script is as pertinent now as in the 1960s where the stakes were even higher than Haves and Have-Nots.-- "DC Theatre Scene on Happy Ending"

Douglas Turner Ward was a highly influential American playwright, actor, director, and producer. He was born in Louisiana in 1930 and raised in New Orleans. Ward moved to New York City in 1949, where he was initially employed as a journalist. He studied playwriting at the Paul Mann Workshop. He began his Off-Broadway career in 1956 as an actor in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh and in 1959 went on to be cast in a minor role in the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun. Guided by a desire to continue the legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois, Ward was determined to create theater that was primarily written by, performed for, and representative of African American people. Ward, Robert Hooks, and Gerald Krone formed the Negro Ensemble Company in 1965. Ward made his playwriting debut that same year with two one acts, Happy Ending and Day of Absence. In 1967, the Negro Ensemble Company officially opened with Ward serving as artistic director, where he continued to act, direct, and write plays. Ward's involvement with the Negro Ensemble Company continued until his death in February 2021.

Day of Absence / Happy Ending premiered Off-Broadway as a double-bill of two one-act plays at the St. Mark's Playhouse in New York in the fall of 1965. The show was a hit, running for 504 performances over 15 months, enduring through the 1966 transit strike. It earned Ward a Drama Desk Award for outstanding new playwright. That same year, Ward authored an opinion piece in The New York Times titled "American Theater: For Whites Only?" The piece garnered him a grant from W. McNeil Lowry of the Ford Foundation. Day of Absence is an often performed and revived play, from community and school productions to off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. Ward was one of the founders of the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967, and served for many years as its artistic director. The company notably produced The River Niger (1972), which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1974 and was adapted as a film of the same name two years later. Ward himself acted in and directed that play, receiving a nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play. The company also produced Home (1979) by Samm-Art Williams and A Soldier's Play (1981) by Charles Fuller. The latter won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was adapted into the film A Soldier's Story. Ward published The Haitian Chronicles in March 2020, having worked on the three-play series for around four decades. He viewed the series, which focused on the Haitian Revolution, as his magnum opus and intended to have it staged by NEC alumni. Among his numerous awards and honors, Ward received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award. In 1996, Ward was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

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