Day of Absence / Happy Ending premiered Off-Broadway as a double-bill of two one-act plays at the St. Mark’s Playhouse in New York in the fall of 1965. The show was a hit, running for 504 performances over 15 months, enduring through the 1966 transit strike. It earned Ward a Drama Desk Award for outstanding new playwright. That same year, Ward authored an opinion piece in The New York Times titled American Theater: For Whites Only? The piece garnered him a grant from W. McNeil Lowry of the Ford Foundation. Day of Absence is an often performed and revived play, from community and school productions to off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. Ward was one of the founders of the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967, and served for many years as its artistic director.

The company notably produced The River Niger (1972), which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1974 and was adapted as a film of the same name two years later. Ward himself acted in and directed that play, receiving a nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play. The company also produced Home (1979) by Samm-Art Williams and A Soldier’s Play (1981) by Charles Fuller. The latter won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was adapted into the film A Soldier’s Story.

Ward published The Haitian Chronicles in March 2020, having worked on the three-play series for around four decades. He viewed the series, which focused on the Haitian Revolution, as his magnum opus and intended to have it staged by NEC alumni. Among his numerous awards and honors, Ward received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award. In 1996, Ward was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.