“It’s said that talent is common, and that’s true. But what is much more rare than talent is longevity. How does one take talent and have it develop and last decade upon decade? I’m thinking about this, because I’ve just finished reading the new autobiography by Al Pacino called Sonny Boy, and it was totally engrossing. No one would call It a work of literature, but you can certainly hear Al’s voice loud and clear, as if he were sitting in a bar with you telling intimate stories about his life and work…”
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear my complete review of Al Pacino’s memoir, Sonny Boy, as broadcast yesterday on the Arts Express program, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Hollywood Walk of Famer Glynn Turman, who is the last living member of the original cast of A Raisin in the Sun, speaking at the Lloyd Richards Way ceremony, tells three great funny, touching stories about Lloyd, and how director Lloyd Richards shaped his life forever.
Lloyd Richards Way. The first new street co-naming in 14 years in the Times Square area, and the first ever in the area for a person of color. More to come.
So excited to announce this. After a three year campaign by Julius Hollingsworth, Chet Whye Jr., and myself to get a street co-named in the Broadway district for legendary director, theater educator, and arts administrator Lloyd Richards, our plans are finally coming to fruition.
And in a wonderful turn of events, the ceremony will be taking place under the marquee of the Ethel Barrymore Theater on West 47th Street, which is where Lloyd Richards directed the ground breaking 1959 production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sidney Poitier–with Lloyd becoming the first African-American director of a drama on Broadway.
Lloyd went on to become Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Theater, head of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, director of many plays of playwright August Wilson on Broadway, and a master educator at Yale, Hunter College, NYU and the NEC, among many, many other accomplishments.
So join us 11am on June 29th 2024 under the marquee of the Ethel Barrymore Theater 243 West 47th Street for the ceremony, and after that we’ll walk down the block to the corner of Broadway and West 47th Street to unveil the sign with Lloyd Richards’ name on it, a permanent tribute to a great theater artist.
This week, it’s 460 years since the birth of Shakespeare, and since we are living in what can only be termed apocalyptic times, it might be fitting to take a look at the most apocalyptic of Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear. Let’s call this episode of my continuing series,“Shakespeare Without Tears,” King Lear: Apocalypse Now.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear my commentary as broadcast today on WBAI-FM and Pacifica stations across the nation.
The Committee to Celebrate Lloyd Richards and friends at City Hall
As mentioned on Wednesday, the New York City Council approved the naming of West 47th Street between Broadway and 8th Ave as “Lloyd Richards Way.” Below is part of the addendum we submitted to the New York City Council minutes of that day, when the resolution was approved by a vote of 46-0 with one abstention. At a later date, I will detail more about how this finally came to pass after Julius Hollingsworth, Chet Whye, Jr., and I worked for almost three years to make this happen.
“It is thrilling that the New York City Council has the opportunity to vote today on co-naming West 47th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue, as “Lloyd Richards Way.” This is a long overdue honor for the legendary Broadway theater director and educator, Lloyd Richards. Broadway is the beating heart of New York City, and the beating heart of Broadway is Lloyd Richards. His accomplishments and influence have been wide and deep and affected every aspect of American theater. Actress Ruby Dee has said that “Lloyd Richards was the Father of the Modern American theater”; James Earl Jones said, “Lloyd Richards was the rabbit everyone was trying to catch”; Charles S. Dutton said, “Lloyd Richards had two sons, but many children”: actors, directors, playwrights, lighting designers, scenic designers and more. Thousands of theater workers and artists have directly benefited artistically and economically from Lloyd Richards’ efforts.
It is befitting that the street to be co-named after the legendary Broadway theater director, teacher, producer, and artistic director is West 47th Street: for that is the street where Lloyd Richards’ groundbreaking production of A Raisin in the Sun in 1959 was first performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, smashing the color barrier on Broadway for African-American directors of drama. West 47th Street is also the location of the Theater Development Fund TKTS booth—and Lloyd was, among many other crucial positions in the American theater, at one time the Chair of the Board of Trustees at TDF. We thank New York City Council member Erik Bottcher for sponsoring this street co-naming and navigating it through the City Council.
On June 29th of this year, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine issued a proclamation proclaiming the day as “Lloyd Richards Day” in recognition of Lloyd’s many contributions to the artistic and cultural life of New York City. June 29th marked both the day of Mr. Richards’ birth and that of his passing, 87 years later, in 2006. Now the New York City Council has the opportunity to vote on making that recognition of Lloyd Richards a more permanent one. With this street co-naming, you are making sure that one of New York City’s most important cultural heroes is not forgotten. Lloyd Richards was not a man to tout his own lifetime of achievement. His way was always quiet influence. It is up to us to preserve his legacy.
Let’s take a walk through some of Lloyd Richards’ many accomplishments in more detail to understand why preserving his legacy is so important to this city and American theater.
Back in their struggling days, when Lloyd Richards and his friend, Sidney Poitier had to pool their change to split a hot dog to eat, they may not have realized that it was just a matter of time before Richards would be directing Poitier in the ground-breaking Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Lloyd had come to NYC shortly after a stint in the armed services during WW2, serving with a unit that would become The Tuskegee Airmen. Soon he was starring on Broadway as an actor, but became even more well known as a consummate acting teacher. Yes, the unknown Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee were among some of his early acting students. And in 1959, he directed the legendary production of A Raisin in the Sun at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Broadway, a groundbreaking production where almost every member of that cast became stars—and in the process, Lloyd Richards became the first African-American director to direct a drama on Broadway.
That would be enough for any one man but there’s so much more to Lloyd Richards’s legacy. As artistic director for decades of the O’Neill Theater’s National Playwrights Conference, Mr. Richards brought dozens of playwrights to the attention of Broadway producers, including John Guare, Lanford Wilson, David Henry Hwang, Christopher Durang, Wendy Wasserstein, Richard Wesley, and Lee Blessing among many others, all as a direct result of Lloyd Richards’ efforts.
But perhaps the most famous playwright that Lloyd Richards mentored was August Wilson, whose work has now been brought both to Broadway and the movie screen. In 1987, the great James Earl Jones—whom Mr. Richards had earlier directed in the one man show Paul Robeson–starred in August Wilson’s play Fences, and Lloyd Richards won the Tony award for Best Director of a Play for his direction of that play. Lloyd subsequently directed five more of Wilson’s works on Broadway.
As impressive as Lloyd’s directing work was—and that included the direction of one of the episodes of the enormously popular Roots mini-series—his direction may not have been his greatest accomplishment. In addition, Mr. Richards was known as a consummate educator of actors, a teacher who was unforgettable to his students who spoke of Lloyd’s quiet way of giving them a sense of artistic purpose and independence. As Dean of the Yale Drama School, as Professor of Theater at Hunter College and New York University, as teacher at the acting school of the Negro Ensemble Company, The Actor’s Center, and his own studio, Lloyd Richards trained hundreds and hundreds of actors including Angela Bassett, Courtney Vance, Kate Burton, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Cicely Tyson. Mr. Richards often said about his actor training that his job was to “prepare birds to fly,” while he stood watching on the ground.
And then concomitant with the direction and the teaching, Mr. Richards was also an able and influential theater administrator. He was a founding member and president of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society; he served, as mentioned before, as chair of the board of directors at TDF; he served on the board of the American Theater wing; he was Artistic Director of National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center; and Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Company.
Lloyd Richards had garnered many awards for his work, all the way up to the National Medal of the Arts, awarded by the Clinton White House. But recognition by the City of New York of the man who has given so much to the cultural and economic life of New York City with a permanent public marker in the theater district, where such a sign of recognition truly belongs, is particularly gratifying.”
We are happy to announce that our campaign to get a street in the theater district named after the legendary theater director and acting teacher Lloyd Richards is coming to a successful conclusion! The New York City Council will be voting on the omnibus street co-naming bill today, and we fully expect it to be passed. Love to Julius Hollingsworth and Chet Whye Jr. for putting their all into this effort and making it happen. We couldn’t ask for more savvy and dedicated colleagues in this endeavor. Props, too, to City Council member Erik Bottcher and his crackerjack staff, especially Carl Wilson. With their help we were able to overcome a 14 year moratorium on street namings in the theater district.
I’m grateful to Stephanie Schubert, Operations Coordinator of the Pacifica Network, for conducting and publishing this interview she did with me about the recent Arts Express production of To The Lighthouse. At the end of the article, you’ll find a link to our podcast page, if you’d like to hear the production.
To The Lighthouse was a novel I had been intrigued with since my twenties. When I heard that it had just gone out of copyright, I thought it would be fun to write a radio adaptation and to direct and edit it.
I started writing this adaptation back in January of this year, rehearsed it and recorded it in April and May with a fine company of actors, and then edited it in June and July. I’m happy to say we’ve finally completed it.
Here’s the logline:
In this adaptation, prepared especially for radio, Virginia Woolf’s ground-breaking stream of consciousness novel, To The Lighthouse, is brought to life.
In a sort of ghost story that plays with time, memory, and recollection, a young boy, over a period of ten years, tries to journey to the lighthouse, a stormy boat ride away from his family’s summer vacation home. The life of his nurturing mother, hemmed in by social and family strictures, is contrasted with that of her artist friend who lives in artistic freedom, but alone.
Included is a brief three minute introduction to give the context of the novel and the era in which Virginia Woolf was writing.
Tony award winning director/actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson gives a beautiful speech, under the marquee of Broadway’s August Wilson Theater this past June 29th, “Lloyd Richards Day,” celebrating the great American director, nurturer of playwrights, acting teacher, and artistic director.
Alan Arkin died this week. Something about the guy that had this core of humanity in whatever he did. I first saw Alan Arkin when I was a teen, before he became famous. He was a member of the famed Second City improv group which was a totally new kind of thing at the time. The audience would call out a time, place, and a beginning and closing line, and then the actors would improv some hilarious scene on the spot incorporating those elements. The performers were all very good, but Arkin was the standout by far. And then he was in the play of Murray Schisgal’s Luv, where he spends the whole play on top of a bridge, ready to jump, because he feels unloved, and he made that true, but very funny too. He could handle drama also–his role as one of the real estate agents in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross was really excellent and touching. He was really a unique presence in everything he did. You knew you would see something interesting no matter how good or bad the rest of the movie or play was. Above you can see him in a scene with Ed Harris in Glengarry Glen Ross as a failed real estate agent trying to get the good leads. In his later years, he wasn’t always the lead, but he often stole them.
Thanks to Borough President Mark Levine, and City Council Member Erik Bottcher and everyone else who worked to make this happen at the August Wilson Theater today. And our next job is to get West 47th Street, where Raisin in the Sun was performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, co-named after Lloyd Richards as a permanent marker of his contribution to Broadway, NYC, and American Theater.
!!UPDATE: The event will happen under the marquee of the beautiful August Wilson Theater on West 52nd Street at 12 noon, June 29th!!
We are so happy to announce the details about the public ceremony for Lloyd Richards Day. The public ceremony will happen in Times Square, Thursday, June 29th, 12 noon. We anticipate some Tony and Emmy Award winning theatrical colleagues of Lloyd to be there. You’re all invited! Feel free to share this notice.
To learn more about what Lloyd Richards has given to Broadway, New York City, and American Theater, see this post.
The City of New York is proclaiming June 29th, 2023 as Lloyd Richards Day!
This is personal for me. First let me tell you about Lloyd.
Lloyd Richards was a fabled theatrical director, acting teacher, and theatrical artistic director; in addition to directing the groundbreaking Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun in 1959, starring Sidney Poitier, he won a Tony award for best direction of the play Fences starring James Earl Jones by August Wilson. In fact, it was Lloyd Richards who discovered August Wilson at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, of which Lloyd was the Artistic Director for many years. There is much more I can say about him, including his work as the Dean of the Yale School of Drama and Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory company, and of his students, including Sidney Poitier, Cicely Tyson, Steven McKinley Henderson, Kate Burton, Courtney Vance, Angela Bassett, and on and on.
He also taught at Hunter College when I was a student there back in the 1970s. I was extraordinarily lucky to have wandered as an undergrad into taking acting and directing classes with Lloyd.
He was the finest teacher of anything that I have ever had. He was a master pedagogue. I was also cast in a play he directed at the college. Though I didn’t go on to act professionally, his teaching profoundly affected me and my outlook on art and life. It was the same with literally thousands of his students. He was a deeply generous, unassuming, brilliantly perceptive and modest man.
Some forty-five years after taking class with Lloyd, I met up with some alums from Hunter who I had not seen since then. How that happened is a story for another time! But we decided it was high time the City of New York honored Lloyd in one way or another. After all, he had been awarded the National Medal of Arts by the Clinton White House, yet the City of New York had never officially honored him. We were determined that we would work to make more of the public aware of Lloyd’s essential and enormous contribution to American theater and Broadway.
And so, after two years of forming the Committee to Celebrate Lloyd Richards 6.29 and working to make this happen, we were thrilled when Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and City Councilmember Erik Bottcher agreed to proclaim June 29th–the day that Lloyd Richards was born, and the day that he passed–as “Lloyd Richards Day.”
More to follow!
Left to Right: Julius Hollingworth and Sharron Cannon of the Committee to Celebrate Lloyd Richards 6.29, New York City Councilmember Erik Bottcher, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, and myself. (Click to enlarge)
The song “Shy” from the Broadway musical, Once Upon a Mattress, made a star out of Carol Burnett. The score was composed by Mary Rodgers, and of course, the last name Rodgers should ring a bell because indeed, Mary Rodgers was the daughter of Richard Rodgers, which was both her blessing and her curse. “Shy” is not only the name of the song but also the name of Mary Rodgers’ recent autobiography, published posthumously with the help of NY Times theatre critic Jesse Green. if there is a major theme in the story of Mary Rodgers life, it is how does a talented daughter get out from under the shadow of a very famous musical genius.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear my review of Shy, as broadcast today on the Art Express radio program, heard on WBAI-FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Imagine please: A working class uprising. The lower classes are starving. They demand the right to eat. They want access to the great stores of grain that have been won in the recent war, confiscated from the enemy, but withheld from the peasants. And so begins the most class-conscious play that Shakespeare ever wrote, called Coriolanus.
Click on the triangle above or mp3 link to hear our commentary on Coriolanus, as broadcast yesterday on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the piece as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio program on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
** Actress Inger Tudor of Goliath speaks about Voodoo Macbeth and playing Rose McClendon, the legendary Depression-era African-American theater actress.
** A portfolio of photos from the actual historic 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of Macbeth
** 28 Children: Artist Mary McClusker’s moving tribute to children killed by guns
and more!
Get your free subscription to the Arts Express Magazine, the companion magazine to Arts Express Radio, by sending an email with the word “subscribe” in the subject line to: artsexpresslist@gmail.com
In our Arts Express Playhouse, a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman is best known for her novella The Yellow Wallpaper, but she also wrote hundreds of other short stories. The one I’m reading above, “If I Were a Man,” was written in 1914, before women even had the right to vote in the US, but it seems a whole lot more modern.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the story as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio show, heard on WBAI-FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
It’s April 23rd, and for us it marks the anniversary of both the birthday of William Shakespeare and the day he died. In celebration of the date, we have produced a new radio version of one of the most intriguing of Shakespeare’s plays, Measure for Measure. I call it Shakespeare’s #Me Too play, and with its up to the minute Me Too themes of sexual harassment and hypocritical Puritanical seeming lying politicians, it couldn’t be more relevant to today. Of course, we couldn’t broadcast our entire play in our Arts Express time slot, but we are happy to present to you a key scene featuring two of our Arts Express stalwarts, Mary Murphy and KeShaun Luckie.
So let’s set the scene: We’re in 16th century Vienna and the newly appointed interim Mayor, Lord Angelo, has just declared a new Puritanical ban on out-of-marriage fornication, punishable by death. A young woman, Isabella, learns, just as she is about to take vows to become a nun, that her poor brother Claudio has run afoul of these laws and is about to be executed. She runs to Lord Angelo to beg him to spare her brother’s life, but Angelo insists that the law must be done. However, Angelo is secretly enamored by Isabella and he wants to see her again, so he tells her to come back the next day and maybe he will reconsider. And so, Isabella returns to Lord Angelo to plead again for her brother.
And now what happens next, from Measure For Measure.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the segment as broadcast today on Arts Express radio, heard on WBAI FM and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
And If you’d like to listen to our entire production of the play, you can hear it here:
