Lloyd’s Broadway tribute
Late director Richards gets street co-name
Late, great theater trailblazer Lloyd Richards will have a street named in his honor on Broadway.
Some new Black history will be made this year when a portion of a Broadway street is officially co-named for theater trailblazer Lloyd Richards — the first Black director to helm a drama on Broadway.
Last December, the New York City Council approved the co-naming of W. 47th St., between Broadway and Eighth Ave., as “Lloyd Richards Way.” The resolution — which has been championed for the better part of three years by actor-producer Julius Hollingsworth, film producer Sharron Cannon, political strategist Chet Whye, Jr. and educator and producer Jack Shalom — was approved by a vote of 46-0 by the
Parks and Recreation Committee at City Hall.
New York City Councilmember Erik Bottcher, who sponsored the co-naming, plans to host an unveiling event this year — on June 29, Richards’ birthday, and coincidentally also the date of his death. In 2023, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine designated June 29 as “Lloyd Richards Day.”
Richards, director of the groundbreaking 1959 Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” is recognized for shepherding Black plays to the mainstream theater circuit. The Detroit-raised Toronto native, who died in 2006, also collaborated with playwright August Wilson on his productions of his acclaimed plays “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Fences,” “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Two Trains Running” and “Seven Guitars.” Richards won the 1987 Tony Award for best director for “Fences.”
Award-winning actor, director and producer Ruben Santiago-Hudson
— who starred in “Seven Guitars” in 1996 and won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role — was part of a tight-knit group of artists seeking to ensure Richards was recognized for his indelible impact on Broadway.
“Lloyd and I had a very personal relationship as well,” he told the Daily News about his late mentor. “I just would go to him for advice as a father, as a grandfather, as a man —not just theater; I talked to him more about life than anything.”
Santiago-Hudson said he specifically chose to study theater at Wayne State University because it was Richards’ alma mater.
Santiago-Hudson praised Richards’ work acumen and likened him to a master of the craft — corralling the likes of Cicely Tyson, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Kate Burton, Courtney
B. Vance and Mary Alice for workshop productions of plays that needed tinkering.
“We would work, we would go back to basics, things you learned was Acting 101 — he would take us through every step of what it means to be an actor. And then he would say, ‘Now you’re ready to be an actor.’”
Richards is also credited with developing works by playwrights Athol Fugard, John Guare, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka, Israel Horovitz, Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang and John Patrick Shanley.
Wearing many hats during his nearly 50-year career, Richards once served as the chairman of the Board of Trustees at Theater Development Fund. While at Yale University, he was dean of the Yale School of Drama, and the artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theater.