Big White Fog

Ward was born in Louisiana in 1902, the sixth of eleven children. His father had been a slave. When Ward was seven years old, he wrote a short play and showed it to his father, who threw it in a fire and said it was "the work of the devil". Big White Fog received a public reading in New York some time before Ward's death in 1983. For the occasion, Ward wrote about his inspiration for the play, discussing a beautiful view he had seen in the Rocky Mountains while riding on freight trains during his youth: ==Plot==

Big White Fog demonstrates the internal black tensions of the 1920s by following the Masons, a black family living in a rented house in Chicago. The residents consist of Victor Mason, his wife Ella, their son Lester, Victor's brother Percy, and Ella's brother-in-law Dan. Lester has received a college scholarship, Percy is returning home from military service, and Dan is a landlord. Their situation slowly spirals downward, with Lester losing his scholarship because he is black, and when the Great Depression hits, the family faces eviction. Victor, in his disillusionment, turns to Garveyism, and plans to emigrate to Africa. Lester begins to support a Communist revolution. Dan remains committed to the American Dream. ==Production==

An original production of the Federal Theatre Project, Big White Fog was presented April 7–May 30, 1938. The production was directed by Kay Ewing, with settings by Hal Kopel. The script for Big White Fog was first published in 1974 in Black Theater USA. The play received its European premiere at the Almeida Theatre in London on May 11, 2007, directed by Michael Attenborough. Around the time of the Almeida Theatre's European premiere of the play, they commissioned their resident playwright Roy Williams to write Out of the Fog, a modern look and comparison of contemporary blacks in England versus those in the 1920s in Chicago. ==Reception==

The Chicago Tribune praised the original 1938 production as a skillfully performed and imaginative footnote to recent history in recording the Marcus Garvey movement that had originated in Chicago. The Herald Examiner noted that the actors "are as much at ease on the stage as in their own homes." Kate Bassett of The Independent on Sunday praised Ward's ability to pack a "state-of-the-nation play into one living room very deftly", and called the play a "still-reverberating portrait of racial anger". Billington said that he admired Ward's management of a large cast, but found that the climax was "both rushed and melodramatic". ==References==