Lloyd Richards

Theater and television director

• Born: June 29, 1919
• Birthplace: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Died: June 29, 2006
• Place of death: New York, New York

Best known for his perceptive and innovative work in theater in the latter half of the twentieth century, Richards was the first African American director to work on Broadway and in television. He launched the careers of a number of important playwrights, including African Americans Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson.

Early Life

Lloyd Richards was born in Toronto, Canada, to Jamaican immigrants Albert Richards and Rose Coote. Lloyd Richards’s father, a carpenter, was a follower of black nationalist Marcus Garvey. When Richards was four, the family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where his father worked in the auto industry. Richards was only nine when his father died, leaving his mother to raise five children during the Great Depression. Rose went blind a few years later, and Richards, at thirteen years of age, helped support the family by shining shoes and working in a barbershop.

Despite their difficult circumstances, Rose was determined her children would attend college. Richards chose to study law at Wayne University in Detroit, although he had acquired a love of drama while studying the works of William Shakespeare at school and started a theater group at college. His studies were interrupted by World War II; Richards enlisted as a volunteer in the Army Air Corps in 1944. He was in the pilot-training program for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama, when the war ended. When he returned to college, Richards became involved in theater and radio production. After graduating, he joined the Welfare Department as a case worker, performing in his spare time with an amateur theater group and as a radio disc jockey.

Life’s Work

In 1947, Richards moved to New York, hoping to launch a career in the theater. Finding few roles for African Americans, he appeared in Off-Broadway productions while living at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and working as a waiter. After auditioning for a show directed by Canadian actor Paul Mann, Richards was invited to teach at his Actors Workshop. Another out-of-work actor, Sidney Poitier, became one of his students. Richards also met his future wife, dancer Barbara Davenport, at the workshop. The couple married in 1957 and had two sons.

Poitier introduced Richards to Lorraine Hansberry, who had written A Raisin in the Sun (1959), a play about a Chicago working-class African American family. Poitier was keen to act in the play and asked Richards to direct it. The play was by a young African American woman, had a predominantly black cast, and was directed by a black director with no experience on Broadway. Nevertheless, when it opened in March, 1959, the play received standing ovations. It was also favorably reviewed by the critics and won the 1959 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.

Unusually for an African American at the time, Richards was invited to direct four more Broadway productions. In 1960, Richards became the first black director to work in television when he directed The Committee for General Electric Theater. In 1966, he was appointed head of the actor-training program at New York University’s School of the Arts, one of the first in the country. In the same year Richards was also invited to direct a play at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. Two years later, he was offered the artistic directorship of the National Playwrights Conference, held every summer at the center. He occupied this position until 1999, nurturing the talent of new dramatists in a workshop setting, free from the pressures of commercial theater.

In 1982, Richards selected a submission for the conference from a young African American named August Wilson. The play was Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Recognizing Wilson’s huge talent, Richards helped Wilson refine the play. It was produced in 1984 at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, where Richards was artistic director from 1979 to 1991. Later that same year, it opened on Broadway to critical acclaim. Richards directed five other plays from Wilson’s chronicle of twentieth century African American life, known as the Pittsburgh Cycle. In 1979, Richards directed segments of Roots: The Next Generations for television, and Robeson, about the life of African American actor and activist Paul Robeson, who had inspired Richards when he was young.

Richards retired from his posts as dean of the drama school at Yale and artistic director of Yale Repertory Theatre in 1991, but he continued teaching and directing up until his death from heart failure at the age of eighty-seven.

Significance

Richards overcame an impoverished background, family tragedy, and racism to become one of the most influential figures in American theater. He championed the work of African American playwrights and brought black audiences into Broadway theaters. With Wilson, Richards formed one of the most successful playwriting and directing partnerships in American theater. Richards was also the first black dean appointed by an Ivy League college. Following his retirement, Yale University established the Lloyd Richards Chair, the first professorship to be named after an African American. Richards won many awards, including a Tony Award for his direction of Fences (1985). In 1993, he received the National Medal of the Arts.

Bibliography

Bartow, Arthur. The Director’s Voice: Twenty-one Interviews. New York: Theatre Communications, 2003. The profile of and interview with Richards offers a detailed reflection on his approach to teaching and theater production.

Richards, Lloyd. “Lloyd Richards: Reflections from the Playwrights’ Champion.” Interview by Caroline R. Raymond. TDR: Drama Review 47, no. 2 (Summer, 2003): 9-33. In this interview, Richards discusses his career in the theater and academia and his collaborations with Wilson.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Lloyd Richards: Reminiscence of a Theatre Life and Beyond.” Interview by N. Graham Nesmith. African American Review 39, no. 3 (Fall, 2005): 281-298. Richards looks back over his life, influences, and career in a well-researched and in-depth interview.