Director Lloyd Richards Dies at 87

Director Lloyd Richards, best known for his longtime artistic partnership with the late playwright August Wilson, died yesterday of heart failure at New York City’s Mt. Sinai Hospital on his birthday. He was 87.

In 1987, Richards won a Tony Award for his direction of Wilson’s Fences. He was also Tony-nominated as director in 1960 for Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and in the 1980s and ’90s for Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Seven Guitars, and The Piano Lesson. In 1986, he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Gershwin Theatre; in 1993, he was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington D.C.

Richards was born in Toronto, Canada, on June 29, 1919. His father, a Jamaican carpenter, moved the family to Detroit in search of a job at Henry Ford’s automobile plant, but he died unexpectedly. After high school, Richards enrolled in a pre-law program at Wayne State University, but soon developed an interest in acting and radio programming. After service in World War II, Richards returned to Detroit and remained active in local theater and broadcasting.

In the 1950s, he moved to New York City, where he found jobs in the theater and television and eventually worked as an acting coach. At the end of that decade, his friend Sidney Poitier asked Richards to direct A Raisin in the Sun, by the then-unknown black playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Following the success of that production, Richards became a drama instructor at New York University and Hunter College. Later, he became director of the National Playwrights’ Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center as well as dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre. He formed a partnership with August Wilson, going on to direct and produce the first seven of the playwright’s works to reach Broadway.

Amy Sullivan, executive director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center said, “Lloyd Richards is irreplaceable. His like will not come again. The American theater and all those who had the privilege to work with him are the better for it. I am honored to have been part of Dean Richard’s last graduating class at Yale and to have worked with him many summers at the O’Neill. I learned about the art of the theater from Lloyd, and, more importantly, the art of being a human being. Lloyd Richards was a gentle, quiet, patient man; with a will of steel. His determination and his artistry took the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference to national and international acclaim. We are and will be forever in his debt.”