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I sing for beloved Fountain actor Adolphus Ward

Posted on November 8, 2021 | 1 comment

Adolphus Ward with playwright Athol Fugard at the Fountain Theatre in 2010.

by Stephen Sachs

“When you look at a fellow, if you taught yourself to look for it, you can see his song written on him. Tell you what kind of man he is in the world.” – Bynum, JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE by August Wilson

Adolphus Ward was a shaman. When you stood in his sphere, you felt it. This was a man who accessed the otherworld. A conjure man, a healer, the keeper of souls. His impish grin, twinkling eyes, the playful tone of his voice warmed the heart.

The Fountain was Adolphus’ theater home. “From the start, the Fountain Family has been like blood-family-members to me,” he said. He and Ben Bradley were friends for more than thirty years, harking back to their Milwaukee theater days. At the Fountain, they partnered on two August Wilson plays. Adolphus’ favorite moment on stage in Gem of the Ocean was going to the City of Bones. “That was a damn good trip.”

I directed him in the premieres of two plays by Athol Fugard. Both times, Adolphus was other-worldly. In Coming Home, he played the ghost-spirit of Oupa (“grandfather”). A gentle soul who tended his desert plants and called the magic pumpkin seeds in his leather pouch “little miracles.”

In Fugard’s The Train Driver, he played a gravedigger overseeing a bleak South African burial site for the unknown and unwanted, who “puts the nameless ones in the grave.” I’ll never forget the moment in the play when Adolphus, as the gravedigger, sang a Xhosa lullaby to the souls in the ground who were “sleeping.” The song floated from Adolphus like smoke on the night air. Haunting, beautiful, quietly transcendent.

Adolphus now sleeps. And I sing to him.

Adolphus Ward passed away on November 7th at the age of eighty-six.

Stephen Sachs is the Artistic Director of the Fountain Theatre.

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Spotlight: Adolphus Ward, award-winning Fountain actor and novelist, knows a good story

Posted on November 17, 2011 | 1 comment

Adolphus Ward is well-known to Fountain audiences for his mesmerizing and award-winning work as an actor in such acclaimed productions as Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Coming Home, and The Train Driver. What you may not know is that he is also a writer: a published novelist.

Adolphus has been honored with acting awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle and the LA Weekly. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration and has received writing awards from the Wisconsin Arts Board, Playwrights’ Fellowship, and the National Endowment For The Arts.

Ward has written an African-American trilogy chronicling the Tallman family: Harvest the Dust, Milk the Iron Cow, and Stand Upside Down. Harvest the Dust introduces the sharecropper’s family during the 1930’s Great Depression. Milk the Iron Cow explores how Milwaukee factories changed in the 1940’s from making autos and washing machines to building warplanes and bombs, as the Tallmans find themselves embroiled in labor struggles and the start of the civil rights movement. Stand Upside Down rests on grandson Calvin Tallman’s shoulders, which evoke white corporate shivers behind unfair policies for Black workers in the 1980’s

Adolphus in the Fountain cafe with playwright Athol Fugard.

How long have you been writing novels?

I am a writer of African-American Family Fiction. I’ve completed three novels following the lives of three successive generations of the same family. I began work on the trilogy September 1984 — I was learning to write fiction while working on the first novel: Harvest the Dust.

What lead you to write this trilogy?

My story grew to be much too involved for one story.

How does writing compare to acting for you, in terms of artistic expression?

The aim of acting and writing is, I think, much the same. Both actor and writer works to have the audience completely involved in the story. They are different in that one works on the stage and the other on the page.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a one-man show bringing elements of the trilogy to the stage. Also, doing preliminary work on a fourth novel.

Adolphus Ward in "The Train Driver".

Describe your relationship with the Fountain Theatre.

I’ve lived long enough to know that people are the most important element in the quality of my life experiences. I feel that way about family, friends, and the places I hold membership. From the start the Fountain Family has been like blood-family-members to me. Ben Bradley introduced me to the rest of the staff, some patrons, and it was — and still is — like I’ve known them for years. I love the Fountain Theatre.