Legendary Director Lloyd Richards Dead of Heart Failure

Legendary director Lloyd Richards died June 29 of heart failure, according to Yale School of Drama Dean James Bundy. He turned 87 that same day.

Richards was born in Toronto, Canada in 1919. By the mid-1940s, he had moved to New York to pursue acting. In 1950, he made his Broadway debut performing in A Phoenix Too Frequent/Freight. Before becoming a director, he also appeared on the Great White Way in The Egghead. His next Broadway credit would make his career-in 1959, he directed the original production of A Raisin in the Sun, receiving a 1960 Tony Award nomination for his work. He directed about a dozen more Broadway shows, winning a 1987 Tony Award for work on Fences and receiving nominations for his efforts on Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson and Seven Guitars.

Richards' reach expanded well beyond Broadway. At different times, he served as head of the actor training program at New York University's School of the Arts, a Professor of Theater and Cinema at Hunter College, dean of the Yale University School of Drama and Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theater. Additionally, for 32 years he served as Artistic Director of the National Playwrights Conference the founding program of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. At the time of his death, he remained a Professor Emeritus at Yale University.

"Lloyd Richards is irreplaceable," Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Executive Director Amy Sullivan said in a statement. "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."