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Lloyd George Richards (June 29, 1919 – June 29, 2006) 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 Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1991 (later Professor Emeritus), and was the first Black director on Broadway.
Among Richards' accomplishments are his staging the original production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, debuting on Broadway to standing ovations, and in 1984 he introduced August Wilson to Broadway in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
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 (née Coote), 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."
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.
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 Richards 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.''
Rose struggled to fund the production and tried to negotiate a fundraising partnership with Kermit Bloomgarden, but balked at his requirement that Ethel Waters replace Claudia McNeil as Lena Younger and that Richards be kept as director only on a provisional basis. After the Chicago tryout in February 1959, Chicago Tribune Claudia Cassidy gave the play a mostly positive review and wrote that Richards's direction was "so right that the false spots are probably on their way out this morning."
The play debuted on March 11, 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and ran for 530 performances. As it was the first Broadway show directed by a black person and written by a black woman, featuring a story about contemporary black characters, there was some doubt that it would be accepted by largely white, largely upper class audiences. On its opening night, the play receiving standing ovation from audiences, with Poitier calling from the stage for Hansberry and Richards to be given their own ovations.
The Broadway production received positive reviews. Brooks Atkinson wrote that Richards's direction brought about "explosions in the performance. But the explosions never give an impression of being arbitrary." Kenneth Tynan praised the play, concluding that Richards specifically had "done a sensible, sensitive, and impeccable job."
Richards also directed the European premiere in July 1959, which originated at the Bristol Hippodrome before transferring to the Adelphi Theatre on London's West End. British critics gave the production mixed reviews.
Richards did not direct Hansberry's future plays, though they maintained a friendly relationship until her death in 1963. In 1959, James Baldwin corresponded with Hansberry "begging" for her to send along his manuscript for The Amen Corner to Richards for his feedback.
Richards was attached to Peter Feibleman's Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright, which premiered on Broadway in 1962 under Joshua Logan's direction. He also directed a version of Arthur Miller's The Crucible—based on its original, non-Broadway script—for Boston University in May 1962. Defining the period before he joined the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, critic Michael Feingold noted that what Richards "did after the huge success of Raisin was immediately not do another black family play."
Richards also directed a production of James Baldwin's The Amen Corner starring Claudia McNeil to tour in Europe , which ran on Broadway in a separate (but concurrent) production directed by Frank Silvera. The play—produced by Ellis Haizlip and Rudolph Stoiber—premiered at the Vienna Festival in June 1965, with subsequent stagings at the Théâtre des Nations, West End's Saville Theatre, and at venues in Amsterdam, Munich, Jerusalem, and other cities.David Adams Leeming (2026). 9781628724387, Skyhorse Publishing Company, Incorporated. ISBN 9781628724387 Baldwin preferred Richards and Haizlip's production and unsuccessfully tried to intercede to stop Silvera's production from advancing to Broadway in its favor.
Founder George C. White brought in Richards as Bedford Forrest's director at Oliansky's request. The play was an early stage credit for Michael Douglas, whose step-father helped found the O'Neill. Richards directed Douglas multiple times at the O'Neill, including as the lead in Ron Cowen
"I had just recently decided to pursue acting. I was very undeveloped. I remember a lot of personal direction from Lloyd Richards, who was a great teacher. He was very articulate. And when something was funny, he had one of the greatest laughs—just from the bottom of his soul. Nothing made you happier than pleasing him."Richards also worked with Cowen on his follow-up to Summertree—a musical called Redemption Center—as well as Joe Julian's Man Around the House and Thomas Oliver Crehore's Just Before Morning.
After a tumultuous National Playwrights Conference in 1968, White invited Richards to become the O'Neill's inaugural artistic director. Richards was the choice—over contenders that included Melvin Bernhardt—due to his experience, his compatibility with the O'Neill system, and what White described as his father-like and "sort of magisterial" qualities. When he became artistic director, Richards planned to refrain from directing individual shows for the O'Neill, focusing on the broader slate.
With White, Richards revived the concept of the Dramaturge, which the O'Neill subsequently helped popularize in the American theater community. Before they developed the role, the O'Neill featured polarizing talkbacks with press critics and audience that meant playwrights "were often at the mercy of some terribly inept critics in very influential positions," decreasing their "ability to experiment freely." When searching for an alternative, White suggested Bertolt Brecht's work as a dramaturg as a guide. Richards researched and eventually implemented dramaturgs for all productions at the O'Neill—one for every four plays—including prominent critics John Lahr, Edith Oliver, and Michael Feingold.
In 1970, Richards went to Nigeria to meet with Wole Soyinka, a political dissident in the country's waning civil war, to invite him to the O'Neill. He workshopped the play he wrote about his prison experience, Madmen and Specialists, with Richards, premiering it in August.
Richards's major roles in the annual National Playwrights' Conference including selecting plays from playwright submissions, running the feedback sessions for new plays, and adjudicating disputes. As White described Richards's impact, "what is known as the O'Neill Process should rightfully be known as the Richards Process."
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 served as YSD dean and Yale Rep artistic director in New Haven, Connecticut from 1979 to 1991; he became Professor Emeritus at Yale School of Drama after his retirement. Though he continued the Yale Rep's tradition of prestige, Yale Rep chronicler James Magruder described Richards's personality as a break from the pugnacious style of Brustein. While the lanky Brustein enjoyed arguing and was criticized as imperious, "Richards, by contrast, was diminutive, rotund, soft-spoken, and circumspect with his language."
In his first season, Richards brought James Earl Jones to the Yale Rep as the lead in the little-produced history play Timon of Athens. Richards himself directed the production, which received middling reviews. Jones joined Timon in a deal with Richards that would allow him to also lead the American premiere of A Lesson from Aloes.
Richards directed Jones as Judge Brack in a 1981 production of Hedda Gabler, starring Dianne Wiest. For The New York Times, Mel Gussow praised Richards's direction of Wiest and Jones, in what he described as an "uncharacteristic, but formfitting role." In 1982, Richards also directed Wiest (as Nora) in A Doll's House, alongside Richard Jenkins (as Torvald).
In his second year, Richards instituted the Yale Rep's Winterfest, which would showcase a slate of four new plays each January. The first Winterfest featured three works from O'Neill alumni—OyamO's The Resurrection of Lady Lester, Corinne Jacker's Domestic Issues and Sybille Pearson's Sally and Marsha—as well as Rococo by Harry Kondoleon.
The Winterfest continued throughout Richards's tenure, but his successor Stan Wojewodski Jr. ended the program in 1992. It also provided extensive opportunities for YSD students focused on lighting, costumes, and other crafts who regularly featured in Winterfest productions, unusual for other works at the semi-professional Yale Rep.
| + !Date !Play !Playwright !Notes !Ref. | ||||
| 1980 | Timon of Athens | William Shakespeare | Starring James Earl Jones | |
| 1981 | Hedda Gabler | Henrik Ibsen | Starring Dianne Wiest and James Earl Jones | |
| Uncle Vanya | Anton Chekhov | Starring Lee Wallace and Glenn Close | ||
| 1982 | Johnny Bull | Kathleen Betsko | Starring Suzanne Shepherd | |
| A Doll's House | Henrik Ibsen | Starring Dianne Wiest and Richard Jenkins | ||
| 1983 | A Touch of the Poet | Eugene O'Neill | Starring George Grizzard | |
| Major Barbara | George Bernard Shaw | |||
| 1984 | Ma Rainey's Black Bottom | August Wilson | Starring Theresa Merritt and Charles Dutton | |
| 1985 | Fences | August Wilson | Starring James Earl Jones, Courtney B. Vance, and Mary Alice | |
| 1986 | Joe Turner's Come and Gone | August Wilson | Starring Charles Dutton, featuring Angela Bassett | |
| 1987 | The Piano Lesson | August Wilson | Starring Samuel L. Jackson and Starletta DuPois | |
| 1989 | Cobb | Lee Blessing | Starring Chris Cooper and Delroy Lindo | |
| 1990 | Two Trains Running | August Wilson | Starring Samuel L. Jackson and Laurence Fishburne | |
| 1991 | A Moon for the Misbegotten | Eugene O'Neill | Starring Frances McDormand and David Strathairn |
Fugard described Yale Rep as a "home away from home," defined in part by the " very, very trusting, supportive, understanding relationship with Lloyd." As Fugard often directed his own plays, Richards was his main consistent collaborator at the theater.
Due to Fugard's productivity at Yale Rep, Samuel G. Freedman wrote that the two men had "sealed a creative and personal partnership almost unparalleled in the American theater." Fugard described their relationship as laconic, but mutually respectful, as though written in the style of Samuel Beckett. He also spoke about how Richards minded his struggle with alcoholism, which he felt "said so much about how he cared about me, not as Athol Fugard the playwright, but as Athol Fugard the man.''
After Fugard derided the O'Neill process and its extensive use of dramaturgs, Richards invited him to the O'Neill to work as a dramaturg on the play The Trinity Site by Janeice Scarborough.
Richards was predeceased by August Wilson and Benjamin Mordecai, who both died in 2005 at age 60. Mordecai was Richards's managing director at Yale Rep and he continued to work with Wilson after the Wilson-Richards split, making them three men particularly associated with The Pittsburgh Cycle. Marion McClinton, who succeeded Richards as Wilson's director-of-choice, credited him with opening opportunity as the first black director on Broadway.
No black director would be working today if not for him. There are no more giants, that’s the way I feel. He took something and changed it—and many lives—forever.June 29,2023 was named Lloyd Richards Day was named by Council Member Erik Bottcher. On June 29,2024, Lloyd Richards Way was named on 47th Street between Broadway & 8th Avenue.
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