Lloyd Richards


Lloyd George Richards was a Canadian-American theatre director, and actor. While head of the National Playwrights Conference, he helped cultivate many of the most famous theater writers of the 20th century. He was also the dean of the David Geffen [School of Drama at Yale University|Yale School of Drama] from 1979 to 1991, and was the first Black director on Broadway.

Early life and education

Richards was born in Toronto, Ontario on June 29, 1919. His name came from the then-current UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George, as his parents—Jamaicans who moved to Canada—were British subjects at the time.
His family moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1923 after seeing an advertisement for employment at Ford's auto-manufacturing plant. His father Albert Richards, a Jamaican carpenter turned auto-industry worker, died of diphtheria when Richards was nine years old. His mother, Rose Richards, went blind when Richards was 13, due to what he said was the "inadequate treatment of a doctor."
Richards attended McMichael Middle School and Northwestern High School. To help make ends meet in the Great Depression, Richards and his brother Allan shined shoes and worked in a barbershop. Richards did not participate in plays in high school—which he explained in an interview by citing the largely white student body—but did some theater with the local Nacirema Club.
Richards originally enrolled to study at Detroit's Wayne University on the pre-law track, though he transitioned to studying acting and radio production. At Wayne, he worked as a janitor and part-time elevator operator to help fund his education.
After graduating in 1944, Richards volunteered for World War II service in the US Army Air Corps. His brother Allan was drafted and Richards learned that the Air Force was willing to train black volunteers with valuable skills—rather than employ them as menial support or infantry units like the other branches—so he joined. He never saw active combat, but he trained with the Tuskegee Airmen.
Richards returned to Detroit following the war. He worked as a social worker during the day, while working at a local radio station and performing with the Actors Company—a local community theater troupe, mainly of Wayne alumni—and the Paul Robeson Art Guild. Though he was the only black member of the Actors Company in an era of de jure racial segregation, he did not view himself as a political artist at the time, recalling in 2001 that:
"It was not theater about making a statement, other than the statement that was in the play, you know. And we were not a theater that was about that. We were doing great plays and that we all loved. And we just did them, you know, and we didn't raise the question ourselves. Nobody seemed to raise it, at least in my earshot, and I was an important member of the company."

Career

In 1948, Richards moved from Detroit to New York City. He had wanted to go to New York to try to develop his acting career and cited a phone call from James Lipton—a school peer who had found early success in New York—as the direct impetus for his move. With Lipton's help, Richards auditioned for a couple Broadway productions and for the Actors Studio, but received rejections.
Richards worked in low-paying off-Broadway productions while working odd jobs and receiving benefits provisioned by the GI Bill. While performing in one off-Broadway play under director Paul Mann, Mann invited him to assist him with his acting school.
While auditioning and working with Mann, Richards began working at the Paramount Pictures executive dining room as a waiter. He continued working there until A Raisin in the Sun, leading studio head Adolph Zukor to exclaim that "our waiter walked out of here and directed a Broadway play!"
At the Paul Mann Actors Workshop, Richards advanced rapidly from a clerical worker to a sought-after teacher of method acting. Through the workshop, he met his wife, the dancer Barbara Davenport, and Sidney Poitier. According to writer Samuel G. Freedman, the technique Mann and Richards used took a middle ground between the sociological techniques of Stella Adler and the psychiatric techniques of Lee Strasberg. As Poitier put it,
"What would do is question us not about our character but about ourselves, until you began to arrive at your own conclusions about your character. It was by looking at the various ways we deluded ourselves, the corners we cut, that we understood ourselves and our characters.
Richards debuted as an actor on Broadway in 1950 in the one-act play Freight, which ran for 5 performances. In 1957, Richards made his second appearance on Broadway in Molly Kazan's The Egghead. Richards played a duplicitous communist student who Karl Malden's liberal professor vehemently defends from charges of communism. Brooks Atkinson reviewed his performance favorably, writing that "Mr. Richards plays the villain with enough skill, intelligence, and bravado to win the admiration of the audience in the end." A then-unknown James Earl Jones debuted on Broadway as Richards's understudy.
Among Richards' accomplishments are his staging the original production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, debuting on Broadway to standing ovations on 11 March 1959, and in 1984 he introduced August Wilson to Broadway in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom''.
As head of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, he helped develop the careers of August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang, Lee Blessing and David Henry Hwang.
Richards was Dean of Yale School of Drama and Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, both in New Haven, Connecticut, from 1979 to 1991; he became Professor Emeritus at Yale School of Drama after his retirement. He was invited to serve on the board of Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre in Atlanta, which opened in 2002.
Richards died of heart failure on his eighty-seventh birthday in New York City.
Richards also taught Moscow Art Theatre acting technique under Paul Mann at the Actor's Workshop in New York alongside Morris Carnovsky.
June 29,2023 was named Lloyd Richards Day was named by Council Member Erik Botcher. June 29,2024 Lloyd Richards Way was named on 47th Street between Broadway & 8th Avenue.

Awards and nominations

;Awards
;Nominations
  • 1960: Tony Award Best Direction of a Play - A Raisin in the Sun
  • 1981: Tony Award Best Play - A Lesson From Aloes
  • 1987: Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play - Fences
  • 1988: Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play - Joe Turner's Come and Gone
  • 1988: Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play - Joe Turner's Come and Gone
  • 1988: Tony Award Best Direction of a Play - Joe Turner's Come and Gone
  • 1988: Tony Award Best Play - A Walk in the Woods
  • 1988: Tony Award Best Play - Joe Turner's Come and Gone
  • 1989: Drama Desk Award Outstanding Revival - Long Day's Journey Into Night
  • 1989: Tony Award Best Revival - Ah, Wilderness!
  • 1990: Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play - The Piano Lesson
  • 1990: Tony Award Best Direction of a Play - The Piano Lesson
  • 1990: Tony Award Best Play - The Piano Lesson
  • 1996: Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play - Seven Guitars
  • 1996: Tony Award Best Direction of a Play - ''Seven Guitars''