Lloyd Richards, theater director and educator who mentored the career of August Wilson and directed the legendary Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” has died of heart failure.
Richards died Thursday — his birthday — at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, Victoria Nolan, deputy director of the Yale School of Drama, said Friday. Always circumspect about his age, he was believed to be in his mid-80s.
Besides Wilson, Richards helped shape the career of many playwrights, working with writers primarily at three major theatrical institutions — the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Center in Waterford, Conn., (which he ran for more than 30 years — from 1966 to 1999); as dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre from 1979 to 1991.
“The astonishing thing about Lloyd’s career is the length and breath of it,” said Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater. “He was the most important African-American presence on Broadway. He broke through a barrier that no one thought possible.
“His sensibility was international but profoundly American. And he was a Buddha in rehearsal. He had the ability not to say anything until he could say exactly the right thing.”
It was with Wilson, who died last October, that Richards forged his most prominent partnership. He directed six of Wilson’s plays on Broadway, starting with “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” in 1984, and their relationship continued through “Fences” (1987), “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” (1988), “The Piano Lesson” (1990), “Two Trains Running” (1992) and “Seven Guitars” (1996). Richards won a Tony Award for his direction of “Fences.”
At the Playwrights Conference, where new works receive staged readings, Richards worked not only with Wilson but with such authors as John Guare, Wendy Wasserstein, David Henry Hwang and Christopher Durang. At Yale Rep, he also championed the work of Athol Fugard and directed several of the South African playwright’s dramas on Broadway including “A Lesson From Aloes” (1980), “Master Harold ... and the boys” (1982) and “Blood Knot” (1985).
Richards made his Broadway directorial debut in 1959 with “A Raisin in the Sun,” Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark play about a black family moving into a white neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The drama, which starred Claudia McNeil, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands, ran for more than a year in New York. It made Poitier a star and propelled Richards into a career teaching drama, first at Hunter College and then New York University.
Seven years later, he became head of the Playwrights Conference in Connecticut and in 1979 took over both the Yale School of Drama and the Yale Rep, which is where Wilson incubated many of his plays before they went on to New York.
Richards was raised in Detroit, the son of Jamaican immigrants who came to the United States by way of Canada. He attended Wayne State University where he planned to study law. But he became interested in theater and found his way to New York where he found work as an actor in small theater productions and in early TV dramas.
Richards is survived by his wife, Barbara, and two sons, Scott and Thomas. Funeral services will be private. A public memorial service will be held at a later date.