Lloyd Richards
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lloyd Richards (June 29, 1919, Toronto, Ontario, Canada – June 29, 2006, New York City) was an American actor and director best known for staging the original production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, which debuted on Broadway to standing ovations on March 11, 1959.
He also brought August Wilson to Broadway with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 1984. As head of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, he helped develop the careers of Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang, Lee Blessing and David Henry Hwang.
Richards was dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1991.
He died on his 87th birthday from heart failure.
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- 1987 Antoinette Perry Award for Best Director, Fences
- 1993 National Medal of Arts
- 2002 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
- Robertson, Campbell (June 30, 2006). Lloyd Richards, Theater Director and Cultivator of Playwrights, Is Dead at 87. New York Times
- "I've had to accept the fact: freedom is never won. You are always in the process of winning it. You have to do it again."
- "The theater was something that seemed to satsify my life need."
- Lloyd Richards via Internet Broadway Database
- Lloyd Richards biography and video interview excerpts by The National Visionary Leadership Project