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.
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 (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."
Move to New York 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.
Acting tenure Richards acted in low-paying off-Broadway productions while working odd jobs and receiving benefits provisioned by the GI Bill. 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!"
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.
Paul Mann Actors Workshop While performing in one off-Broadway play under director Paul Mann, Mann invited him to assist him with his acting school. 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. Richards became good friends with Poitier at the time as too relatively poor actors trying to break through on Broadway. One anecdote Richards shared told of how the two men shared a hot dog at one point, as neither wanted to spare the money on their own. At one point in this fallow period, Poitier promised him an opportunity as director, should Poitier earn a starring role. Richards also taught Moscow Art Theatre acting technique alongside Morris Carnovsky.
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.''
A Raisin in the Sun
In early 1958, Poitier sent Richards a script for A Raisin in the Sun. After reading it with his wife, Richards met with both producer Philip Rose and playwright Lorraine Hansberry and began collaborating on the project. Richards and Hansberry worked weekly to revise the script, wherein Hansberry would present her pages and Richards would make suggestions. They bonded over their mutual appreciation for the work of Anton Chekhov, Paul Robeson, and Seán O'Casey, whose Juno and the Paycock Hansberry used as a model during the revision process. Hansberry biographer Charles J. Shields argued that Richards was a major contributor to the final script, though it's not possible to compare the difference the revisions made as the original manuscript was lost.
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 McNeill 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 "Acidy" Cassidy gave the play a mostly positive review and wrote that Richards's direction was "so right that [the play's] 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.
Other directing work In the years after A Raisin in the Sun, Richards directed multiple other productions on Broadway:
The Long Dream (1960, Ketti Frings) The Moon Besieged (1962, Seyril Schochen) I Had a Ball (1964, Jack Lawrence & Stan Freeman) The Yearling musical (1965, Michael Leonard & Herbert Martin) Paul Robeson (1978, Philip Hayes Dean)
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 McNeill 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 Savile Theatre, and at venues in Amsterdam, Munich, Jerusalem, and other cities. Baldwin preferred Richards and Haizlip's production and unsuccessfully tried to intercede to stop Silvera's production from advancing to Broadway in its favor.
The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Richards first went to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in 1966—its second season of existence—to direct Joel Oliansky's Bedford Forrest, about the Confederate general and an emancipated man's attempt to kill him. The production, starring James Edwards, was one of the O'Neill's first full undertakings, with Richards arriving before the construction on the play's stage was completed.
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 Bill Cowen's Summertree—which later ran on Broadway—and Neil Yarema's Rainless Sky. Jeffrey Sweet quoted Douglas describing his relationship with Richards: "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.