Samm-Art Williams, a Tony-nominated playwright, actor, director and the executive producer of NBC’s Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, has died. He was 78.
Williams died peacefully in Burgaw, North Carolina on Monday, his cousin Carol Brown confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Mr. Williams’ contributions to American theater and television will live on but he will be greatly missed,” Brown said via statement.
For the theater community, Williams was perhaps best known as the Tony-nominated playwright of Home, which was first directed by Douglas Turner Ward and produced on Broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1980. The show is set to return to Broadway on June 5, with Kenny Leon directing this time.
Williams also wrote stage works such as Welcome To Black River, Friends, and other plays produced in New York, Los Angeles and beyond. In addition to its Tony nod for best Broadway play, Home won the Outer Critics Circle Award,...
Williams died peacefully in Burgaw, North Carolina on Monday, his cousin Carol Brown confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Mr. Williams’ contributions to American theater and television will live on but he will be greatly missed,” Brown said via statement.
For the theater community, Williams was perhaps best known as the Tony-nominated playwright of Home, which was first directed by Douglas Turner Ward and produced on Broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1980. The show is set to return to Broadway on June 5, with Kenny Leon directing this time.
Williams also wrote stage works such as Welcome To Black River, Friends, and other plays produced in New York, Los Angeles and beyond. In addition to its Tony nod for best Broadway play, Home won the Outer Critics Circle Award,...
- 5/14/2024
- by Zoe G Phillips
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
With the 96th Academy Awards in the history books, it’s time to become obsessed over the 77th Tony Awards. Nominations are April 30th with the awards set to air on CBS on June 16 from Lincoln Center. Among the contenders for Tony nominations are many musicals based on movies including “Back to the Future,’ “The Notebook,” “Water for Elephants” and “The Outsiders”: high profile revivals such as Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” with Jeremy Strong; “Cabaret” with Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne and the Who’s “Tommy”; imports from London and transfers from off-Broadway.
Do you remember the Tony landscape 50 years ago? The 28th annual honors took place April 21, 1974, at the Shubert Theater and aired on ABC. And to say it was a star-studded affair is something of an understatement. Robert Preston, Peter Falk, Cicely Tyson, Florence Henderson hosted; presenters included Al Pacino –-let’s hope he had better...
Do you remember the Tony landscape 50 years ago? The 28th annual honors took place April 21, 1974, at the Shubert Theater and aired on ABC. And to say it was a star-studded affair is something of an understatement. Robert Preston, Peter Falk, Cicely Tyson, Florence Henderson hosted; presenters included Al Pacino –-let’s hope he had better...
- 3/14/2024
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
A new production of Samm-Art Williams’ 1979 play Home, to be directed by Kenny Leon, will begin performances May 17, 2014, at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s American Airlines Theatre / Todd Haimes Theatre, with an opening night set for June 5.
The limited engagement – casting yet to be announced – runs through July 28.
Tony-nominated for its original 1980 Broadway run starring Charles Brown and directed by Douglas Turner Ward, Home was initially staged the year prior by the Negro Ensemble Company and was featured in 2021 as part of the initial year of Roundabout’s Refocus Project.
As described by Roundabout, Home “is a muscular and melodic coming-of-age story that gives voice to the unbreakable spirit of all Americans who have been searching for a place to belong.” The main character, Chephus Miles, “has the whole world in his callused hands – until his sweetheart Pattie Mae goes off to college and marries another man.”
The creative team...
The limited engagement – casting yet to be announced – runs through July 28.
Tony-nominated for its original 1980 Broadway run starring Charles Brown and directed by Douglas Turner Ward, Home was initially staged the year prior by the Negro Ensemble Company and was featured in 2021 as part of the initial year of Roundabout’s Refocus Project.
As described by Roundabout, Home “is a muscular and melodic coming-of-age story that gives voice to the unbreakable spirit of all Americans who have been searching for a place to belong.” The main character, Chephus Miles, “has the whole world in his callused hands – until his sweetheart Pattie Mae goes off to college and marries another man.”
The creative team...
- 12/6/2023
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
Mary Alice, the Tony- and Emmy-winning actress who starred in the original Broadway production of Fences, portrayed the mother of three singing daughters in Sparkle and appeared as The Oracle in The Matrix Revolutions, has died. She was 85.
Alice died Wednesday in her Manhattan apartment, an NYPD spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.
In 1990 films, Alice played Nurse Margaret opposite Robin Williams and Robert De Niro in Awakenings, directed by Penny Marshall; the family matriarch dealing with a disruptive guest (Danny Glover) in Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger; and a woman whose son was struck by a car in the South Bronx in Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.
The onetime Chicago schoolteacher received back-to-back Emmy nominations in 1992 and ’93 — winning in the second year — for her supporting turn as Marguerite Peck, whose child is murdered, on the Atlanta-set NBC legal drama I’ll Fly Away,...
Mary Alice, the Tony- and Emmy-winning actress who starred in the original Broadway production of Fences, portrayed the mother of three singing daughters in Sparkle and appeared as The Oracle in The Matrix Revolutions, has died. She was 85.
Alice died Wednesday in her Manhattan apartment, an NYPD spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.
In 1990 films, Alice played Nurse Margaret opposite Robin Williams and Robert De Niro in Awakenings, directed by Penny Marshall; the family matriarch dealing with a disruptive guest (Danny Glover) in Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger; and a woman whose son was struck by a car in the South Bronx in Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.
The onetime Chicago schoolteacher received back-to-back Emmy nominations in 1992 and ’93 — winning in the second year — for her supporting turn as Marguerite Peck, whose child is murdered, on the Atlanta-set NBC legal drama I’ll Fly Away,...
- 7/28/2022
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Tony Awards Administration Committee announced today that the 2020 Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre – to be presented in September – will go to Fred Gallo, President of Prg Scenic Technologies; Broadway press agent Irene Gandy; stage manager Beverly Jenkins and New Federal Theatre founder Woodie King, Jr.
“We are thrilled to recognize these deserving individuals and organizations with Tony Honors this year,” said Heather Hitchens, President of the American Theatre Wing and Charlotte St. Martin, President of The Broadway League. “New Federal Theatre, Fred Gallo, Irene Gandy, and Beverly Jenkins have made immeasurable contributions to the theatre community, and their impact will be felt for years to come.”
The Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre were established in 1990 and are awarded annually to institutions, individuals and/or organizations that have demonstrated extraordinary achievement in theater, but are not eligible in any of the established Tony Award categories.
Gallo,...
“We are thrilled to recognize these deserving individuals and organizations with Tony Honors this year,” said Heather Hitchens, President of the American Theatre Wing and Charlotte St. Martin, President of The Broadway League. “New Federal Theatre, Fred Gallo, Irene Gandy, and Beverly Jenkins have made immeasurable contributions to the theatre community, and their impact will be felt for years to come.”
The Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre were established in 1990 and are awarded annually to institutions, individuals and/or organizations that have demonstrated extraordinary achievement in theater, but are not eligible in any of the established Tony Award categories.
Gallo,...
- 8/4/2021
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
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 New York City. He was 90.
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 The Iceman Cometh and on Broadway in A Raisin in the Sun – when, according to The New York Times, 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. Krone in other leadership roles.
The Company...
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 The Iceman Cometh and on Broadway in A Raisin in the Sun – when, according to The New York Times, 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. Krone in other leadership roles.
The Company...
- 2/23/2021
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Douglas Turner Ward, a Tony-winning playwright, director and actor who co-founded New York’s trailblazing Negro Ensemble Company, has died. He was 90.
Ward, inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan, his wife, Diana Ward, told The New York Times.
Energized by the success of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and with help from a Ford Foundation grant, Ward, actor Robert Hooks and theater manager Gerald Krone officially launched the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967 as a home for Black playwrights, actors and crewmembers.
The theater group’s The River ...
Ward, inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan, his wife, Diana Ward, told The New York Times.
Energized by the success of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and with help from a Ford Foundation grant, Ward, actor Robert Hooks and theater manager Gerald Krone officially launched the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967 as a home for Black playwrights, actors and crewmembers.
The theater group’s The River ...
- 2/23/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Douglas Turner Ward, a Tony-winning playwright, director and actor who co-founded New York’s trailblazing Negro Ensemble Company, has died. He was 90.
Ward, inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan, his wife, Diana Ward, told The New York Times.
Energized by the success of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and with help from a Ford Foundation grant, Ward, actor Robert Hooks and theater manager Gerald Krone officially launched the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967 as a home for Black playwrights, actors and crewmembers.
The theater group’s The River ...
Ward, inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan, his wife, Diana Ward, told The New York Times.
Energized by the success of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and with help from a Ford Foundation grant, Ward, actor Robert Hooks and theater manager Gerald Krone officially launched the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967 as a home for Black playwrights, actors and crewmembers.
The theater group’s The River ...
- 2/23/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
THR to look back at her career highlights. "I would say my career began with high points." She speaks fondly of the months after her sophomore year at Howard University when she spent the summer with the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. "This was during its heyday. The actors in that company were Moses Gunn, Hattie Winston, Rosalind Cash, Frances Foster, Esther Rolle," she says. "Robert Hooks was one of the directors of the theater. Douglas Turner Ward ...
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I’m sure many of you have heard of or read Douglas Turner Ward’s 1965 one act play "Day of Absence." As a refresher (and an introduction to those who don’t know the work) "Day of Absence" is set in a southern town where one day the white residents, to their shock and utter horror, wake to find that most of the town’s black people have vanished. The only remaining black people are in comas, and some of the folks they thought were white...well, turns out they've vanished too. Panic ensues as the whites realize that there’s no one to shine shoes, raise their kids, and clean their houses (among other things). The town mayor makes a national plea for the...
- 5/6/2015
- by Stephanie
- ShadowAndAct
I’m sure many of you have heard of or read Douglas Turner Ward’s 1965 one act play Day of Absence. As a refresher (and an introduction to those who don’t know the work) Day of Absence is set in a southern town where one day the white residents, to their shock and utter horror, wake to find that most of the town’s black people have vanished. The only remaining black people are in comas, and some of the folks they thought were white...well, turns out they've vanished too. Panic ensues as the whites realize that there’s no one to shine shoes, raise their kids, and clean their houses (among other things). The town mayor makes a national plea for the return of the black people, and if he...
- 5/24/2013
- by Stephanie
- ShadowAndAct
Bill Cosby as we rarely get to see him, in a true dramatic role, his first big screen role – 1971′s Man And Boy. Prior to this, he was primarily a TV celeb.
A Western, occurring just after the Civil War, Cosby’s Caleb Revers is a man with a family (wife and son, played well by Gloria Foster and George Spell) he must protect from racist whites determined to scare them off their newly acquired homestead. But Caleb refuses to be bullied; he’s fearless, carrying a loaded rifle, and shoots with intent to kill, more than a few times; and he won’t be belittled or condescended to.
It’s part road movie, part father/son bonding drama, with the search for a stolen horse, and a man’s pride at the center of it all, as well as a colorful cast of friends and foes along the way.
A Western, occurring just after the Civil War, Cosby’s Caleb Revers is a man with a family (wife and son, played well by Gloria Foster and George Spell) he must protect from racist whites determined to scare them off their newly acquired homestead. But Caleb refuses to be bullied; he’s fearless, carrying a loaded rifle, and shoots with intent to kill, more than a few times; and he won’t be belittled or condescended to.
It’s part road movie, part father/son bonding drama, with the search for a stolen horse, and a man’s pride at the center of it all, as well as a colorful cast of friends and foes along the way.
- 4/11/2011
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
I’m sure many of you have heard of or read Douglas Turner Ward’s 1965 one act play Day of Absence. As a refresher (and an introduction to those who don’t know the work) Day of Absence is set in a southern town where one day the white residents, to their shock and utter horror, wake to find that most of the town’s black people have vanished. The only remaining black people are in comas, and some of the folks they thought were white…well, turns out they’ve vanished too. Panic ensues as the whites realize that there’s no one to shine shoes, raise their kids, and clean their houses (among other things). The town mayor makes a national plea for the return of the black people, and if he can’t have them back, well, maybe some other blacks will do just fine. By the...
- 9/11/2010
- by Obsidienne
- ShadowAndAct
Bill Cosby as we rarely get to see him, in a true dramatic role, his first big screen role – 1971’s Man And Boy. Prior to this, he was primarily a TV celeb.
A Western, occurring just after the Civil War, Cosby’s Caleb Revers is a man with a family (wife and son, played well by Gloria Foster and George Spell) he must protect from racist whites determined to scare them off their newly acquired homestead. But Caleb refuses to be bullied; he’s fearless, carrying a loaded rifle, and shoots with intent to kill, more than a few times; and he won’t be belittled or condescended to.
It’s part road movie, part father/son bonding drama, with the search for a stolen horse, and a man’s pride at the center of it all, with a colorful cast of friends and foes along the way. There’s...
A Western, occurring just after the Civil War, Cosby’s Caleb Revers is a man with a family (wife and son, played well by Gloria Foster and George Spell) he must protect from racist whites determined to scare them off their newly acquired homestead. But Caleb refuses to be bullied; he’s fearless, carrying a loaded rifle, and shoots with intent to kill, more than a few times; and he won’t be belittled or condescended to.
It’s part road movie, part father/son bonding drama, with the search for a stolen horse, and a man’s pride at the center of it all, with a colorful cast of friends and foes along the way. There’s...
- 3/15/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) will celebrate Douglas Turner Ward, founder of the Negro Ensemble Company, with their 2009 Annual Gala on Monday, March 30th at Espace (635 West 42nd Street). Cocktails will begin at 6:30pm with dinner at 7:30 Pm and performance/tribute to follow. The evening will be hosted by Phylicia Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Individual ticket prices range from $600-$1,200 with table prices ranging from $6,000-$25,000.
- 3/26/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) is proud to announce casting for a staged reading of Day Of Absence, written and directed by Douglas Turner Ward. The staged reading, which is by invitation only, is part of Signature's 2008-2009 Season, celebrating the historic works of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). Day Of Absence is the landmark 1965 play that launched the founding of the NEC.
- 2/1/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) is proud to announce casting for a staged reading of Day Of Absence, written and directed by Douglas Turner Ward. The staged reading, which is by invitation only, is part of Signature's 2008-2009 Season, celebrating the historic works of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). Day Of Absence is the landmark 1965 play that launched the founding of the NEC.
- 1/29/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
"With all due respect to his excellence," says Douglas Turner Ward, "audiences think that black theatre is August Wilson. That irks me when people feel there is only one black view, one black style, one black spokesman. There is a breadth of black writing." Indeed, from the time Ward co-founded the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967, his mission has been to demonstrate how wide and varied that vision is. In its first 15 years, NEC produced such diverse playwrights as Lonnie Elder, Charles Fuller, and Leslie Lee; the company and its productions have won two Tony Awards and several Obies. To honor the company's contribution to American theatre, Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre Company is devoting its 2008-09 season to several of NEC's best-known works, including Lee's The First Breeze of Summer, Fuller's Zooman and the Sign, and Samm-Art Williams' Home. There will also be a staged reading of Ward's Day of Absence...
- 8/18/2008
- by Simi Horwitz
- backstage.com
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