JCSU Ira B. Aldridge
Drama Guild Performance
The Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward

Thursday and Friday, April 10 & 11
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
 7:30 p.m.

The Johnson C. Smith University Ira F. Aldridge Drama Guild is named in honor of America’s first professional black actor and playwright. Born July 24, 1807, his place of birth is variously listed as New York (most likely), Maryland and Senegal (where he is reported to be of a royal tribe in Africa). He achieved critical and popular acclaim on the European stage. He was the first Negro to play roles such as Macbeth, Shylock and King Lear. From 1820-1824 he was educated at the African Free School established in New York in 1787 by the Manumission Society. His career was mainly in England and Germany. While performing in Lodz, Poland in 1867, he died from an affliction of the heart.

After several years the Ira F. Aldridge Drama Guild returns to its home stage with a production of The Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward.  The Day of Absence is a satire about an imaginary Southern town where all the black people have suddenly disappeared. The only ones left are sick and lying in hospital beds, refusing to get well. Infants are crying because they are being tended to by strange parents. The Mayor pleads for the President, Governor, and the NAACP to send him "a jackpot of jigaboos." On a nationwide radio network he calls on the blacks, wherever they are, to come back. He shows them the cloths with which they wash cars and the brushes with which they shine shoes as sentimental reminders of the goodies that await them. In the end the blacks begin to reappear as mysteriously as they had vanished, and the white community, sobered by what has transpired, breathes a sigh of relief at the return of the rather uneasy status quo. What will happen next is left unsaid, but the suggestion is strong that things will never quite be the same again.

Negro Ensemble Company co-founder, actor, director, and playwright Douglas Turner Ward was born Roosevelt Ward, Jr. on May 5, 1930 in Burnside, La. Ward is a descendant of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan. His great, great, great-grandmother, Elnora, owned by slave owner Nathan Forrest, bore a child with him. Ward's parents, Roosevelt Ward and Dorothy Short Ward were field hands, but they owned their own tailoring business. Raised in New Orleans, Louisiana and attending Xavier Prep High School, Ward graduated in 1946 at the age of 16. He then attended Wilberforce University in 1946, where he performed in two plays, Thunder Rock and A Shot In The Dark and discovered his ambition to be a sportswriter. Wilberforce began to lose its accreditation, Ward transferred to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he played football his freshman year. In 1949, Ward decided that he wanted to leave college altogether.

At the age of 19, Ward went to New York City, where he politically involved and worked as a journalist. He then decided to become a playwright and studied at the Paul Mann Workshop in New York City. In 1956, he began his off-Broadway career as an actor in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. He went on to perform and understudy for a part in A Raisin In The Sun. Ward, Robert Hooks, and Gerald Krone formed the Negro Ensemble Company in 1965. Ward made his playwriting debut that same year with Happy Ending and The Day of Absence. In 1967, the Negro Ensemble Company was officially opened with Ward serving as artistic director. Among the company's notable productions are A Soldier's Play and The River Niger. The River Niger became the company's first play to go to Broadway. It also won a Tony Award for Best Play. Plays by Ward include, The Reckoning and Brotherhood. As a result of Ward's and others' hard work, the Negro Ensemble Company has produced more than 200 plays and provided a place for black actors to gain experience and prominence in the theatre. Some notable actors who have worked with the Negro Ensemble Company include Louis Gossett Jr., Phylicia Rashad, and Sherman Hemsley.  

Lyceum Series
Fall 2007 - Spring 2008 Calendar

Click on speaker's name for more information.

Fall 2007

Thursday, September 6 — Byron Pitts, CBS Reporter
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, September 26 — Harriet Washington, Editor
and Medical Ethicist
“Medical Apartheid”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Thursday, October 4 — Dr. Na’im Akbar, Psychologist
“What Will Our Legacy Be?”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, October 24 — Beatrice Thompson, News Anchor and Talk Show Host
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Thursday, November 1 — Lyceum Program in Collaboration with the JCSU Violence
Prevention Coalition
Tony Porter, Educator and Activist
“A Call To Men”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, November 14 — Dr. Brian Johnson, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs
“W.E.B. Du Bois, Becoming Agnostic”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

SPRING 2008

Thursday, January 24 — Co-Sponsored by the Lyceum
Program and the African and African-American Studies Program
“A Woman, Ain’t I?”
Sojourner Truth as recreated by Kathryn Woods
Dramatic Performance
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, February 6 — Faculty Showcase Event
Dr. Gregory Thompson
Chair, Department of Music Johnson C. Smith University
Piano and Woodwind Quintet Recital
The Jane M. Smith Memorial Church
7:30 p.m.

Friday, February 15 — Dr. Maha Gingrich's Indian
Dance Students
“Dances of India”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 18 — Lyceum Program in Collaboration
with THE JCSU Violence Prevention Coalition
Kevin Powell, Political Activist
“Sexism From a Male Perspecitve”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 25 — Thirteenth Annual World of
Words Poetry Festival
Dr. Patrica Jabbeh Wesley, Poet
Lionel H. Newsom Humanities Building, Room 108
Writing Workshop
4:00 p.m.

Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
Public Reading
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 26 — ANNOUNCEMENT

Due to circumstances beyond our control, these Lyceum Poetry Festival events will be changed. 
Tyehimba Jess is not able to perform at this time.

Thursday, March 27 — Metta S. Sáma, Poet
(Formerly Lydia Melvin)
Lionel H. Newsom Humanities Building, Room 108
Writing Workshop
4:00 p.m.

Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
Public Reading
7:30 p.m.

Friday, March 28 — Thirteenth World of Words
Poetry Festival
Black Ink Monks Performance Poetry
Public Reading
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Thursday and Friday, April 10 and 11 — JCSU Ira B. Aldridge
Drama Guild Performance
The Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Thursday, April 17 — Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon,
Music Historian
“Notes from the Cultural Autobiography of a Freedom Singer”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.