Douglas Turner Ward: A Lens on âQuestions That the Country Wasnât Askingâ Samuel L. Jackson, David Alan Grier, Phylicia Rashad and others remember the Negro Ensemble Company founder. Douglas Turner Ward waiting to go onstage after the opening night performance of “A Soldier’s Play” in January 2020. Kenny Leon, who led the production, called Ward’s presence and smile up there that night “the greatest experience for me as an American director.”Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times By the time he founded the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967 with Robert Hooks and Gerald Krone, he had already been on Broadway in the original 1959 cast of âA Raisin in the Sun,â playing a tiny role while understudying Sidney Poitier.