Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 29, 1993 TAG: 9309290227
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I know how I feel it," she said to an audience of about 60 people in the Wesley Foundation at Virginia Tech.
"I know how I do it, that I work real hard, but I really can't tell you."
But she shows how she does it.
Ward draws her audience in with her voice - a deep, strong voice, slightly gravelly with time but warm and rich. It thumps out a chant or breathes a mournful hum.
Her words move smoothly from one topic to another.
Ward was speaking Tuesday morning to the students of Nikki Giovanni, the poet and English professor who invited her to visit the area. Giovanni and Ward met and became friends in the 1960s.
"I try to go back and research the art of Africa," Ward said, continuing to explain her style. "Art must be functional. Carvings, paintings, masks all represent something. . . . It's not enough to explain a particular black reality. You must tell why it exists and the alternatives" by using characters that entertain while telling the story.
Ward grew up in the small town of Mound Bayou, Miss. "I had a very, very, rich background." Her doctor was black, her teachers were black, the railroad conductor was black and the postmaster was black. She attended a private preschool for blacks. She was one of eight children, but in those days the community was her family, too, she said.
"I thought everybody knew about Mound Bayou and was crazy about" black American culture and history the way she was.
She moved to Chicago and married Francis Ward, an associate professor at the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University.
In 1968, Ward started the Kuumba Theatre in Chicago.
"I saw a need and wanted to give birth to an organization that would speak to the [black] people from a historical perspective," she said. Kuumba is an African word meaning "to build anew, to clean, to create. We try to take that literally."
She started the company in her living room and chose to Art is one of the most incredible things in the world for me. Val Gray-Ward Performer perform works by black writers "because a lot of our work was not getting done."
"We were kind of a suitcase theater" that traveled from place to place, often performing on the streets. "We'd go in taverns and take over, drinking and laughing, and then we'd go into the ritual [improvising performances]," she said.
Her theater's musical revue, "The Heart of the Blues," has played to sold-out houses at events around the world, such as the Montreal International Jazz Festival.
She performed her latest work, "My Soul Is A Witness: Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance" Sunday at Mill Mountain Theatre and Monday night at Tech. Using her own style of characterization, she presents works by a variety of poets including Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Giovanni.
Ward said her contribution to art is simply to make people aware of it, and "allow them to look inside people. Keeping the word alive and keeping the history [of my people alive], the way they felt and what they saw. It's wonderful creativity.
"Art is one of the most incredible things in the world for me," she said. "Get the feeling out, and it belongs to all of the people."
by CNB