- History of Day of Absence -
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Originally a protest play by Douglas Turner Ward
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1956 - Douglas Turner Ward began his Off-Broadway career as an actor in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh
- actor and understudy in A Raisin in the Sun as Douglas Turner
- Day of Absence/Happy Ending
- Ceremonies in Dark Old Men
- The River Niger
- 1965 - Made his playwrighting debut with Happy Ending/Day of Absence at the St. Marks Playhouse on November 15, 1965
- Wrote two other plays: The Reckoning (1969) and Brotherhood (1970)
- 1967 - Co-founded the Negro Ensemble Company with Robert Hooks and Gerald S. Krone; Ward serves as artistic director to this day directing such notable plays as Day of Absence, The River Niger and Home.
- 1969 - A Day of Absence was called and blacks stayed home from work. Today This is necessary again to join the fight for immigrants rights.
(More to come!)
