 | Lloyd Richards is pictured with the Tony Award for Best Director that he received for his work on August Wilson's "Fences," a play that made its debut at the Yale Rep during his tenure there. |
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired the papers of Tony Award-winning theater director Lloyd Richards, a former dean of the Yale School of Drama whose work is credited with transforming the role of African Americans in the theater.
The Lloyd Richards Papers, which are now part of the Yale Collection of American Literature, contain scripts, audio and video recordings of plays, photographs, programs, reviews and correspondence pertaining to plays Richards directed.
Some of the photographs and other materials document the National Playwrights Conference, held annually at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. Richards played a role in the creation of the conference -- at which new playwrights can develop their work -- and became its artistic director in 1968.
The Lloyd Richards Papers also feature posters of the many productions with which Richards has been associated at Yale, on Broadway and in theaters around the world.
Richards first rose to fame in 1958, when his friend and colleague Sidney Poitier asked him to direct the Broadway staging of Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." The production marked several firsts on Broadway: It was the first play by an African-American woman, the first directed by an African American and the first portrayal of a contemporary African-American family. In addition to bringing Richards to the forefront as a pioneering black director, the production launched the careers of Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands at a time when roles available to African-American actors had traditionally been restricted to those of servants or comedians.
Born in Toronto in 1923, Richards subsequently relocated to Detroit. Though his family faced adversity through the Depression years, Richards pursued a college education at Wayne State University. After serving in World War II, he became active in local theater, doing mostly radio plays in his early career. Determined to pursue his theatrical ambitions, he moved to New York City in 1947.
Since the groundbreaking production of "A Raisin in the Sun," Richards has devoted his career to teaching and the fostering of new and undiscovered theater talent. He taught at New York University's School of the Arts and Hunter College before being named dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1979. At the Yale Rep, he began a collaboration with the then unknown African-American playwright August Wilson, staging the world premiere of Wilson's "Fences" in 1986. The show went on to Broadway a year later under Richards' direction, earning the Yale dean a Tony Award for Best Director. (Wilson was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work.) Richards retired from Yale in 1991.
Among the other works Richards has directed are Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and "Two Trains Running"; Athol Fugard's "Master Harold ... and the Boys"; and the television production of "Paul Robeson" with James Earl Jones. He has also directed classics by Shakespeare, Shaw and Chekhov, among others.
Richards has earned numerous prestigious awards for his contributions to the theater, including the Frederick Douglass Award, the National Medal of the Arts and an Academy of Achievement Award, which honors individuals who have shaped the world.
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