Lloyd Richards Papers

The Lloyd Richards Papers (YCAL MSS 366) are fully processed and open for research at the Beinecke Library.

The Lloyd Richards Papers document the life and work of the director, educator, and actor Lloyd Richards. The papers consist of production files, professional papers, photographs, correspondence, programs, audiovisual and printed material spanning the years 1944 to 2004. The papers primarily document the professional life of Lloyd Richards through his production files, professional papers, and Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theater Center administrative files.

Production files contain materials from all stages of production for theater, television, and radio productions directed by Richards, including those he drafted while Dean of the Yale School of Drama and Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre, and in a few instances for early plays in which Richards acted. Correspondence in the production files reveals the close professional relationship that Richards had with playwright August Wilson through directing six of Wilson’s plays. Professional papers include files from Richards’s service on various committees, boards, councils, and related activities; his teaching files from positions at universities and colleges; his speeches and lectures; awards and honorary degrees; clippings and printed material; and other papers related to his professional life. The Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theater Center material consists of administrative files and photographs that document his work as Artistic Director of the National Playwright Conference and his involvement in other Center activities.

The papers also include correspondence with organizations and individuals, almost entirely regarding his professional affiliation with various theater projects. Photographs in the collection provide images of Richards, productions, award and honorary degree ceremonies, and other places and people. Audiovisual materials include film, video and sound recordings and film footage of productions, interviews, and other recordings of interest to Richards. A small amount of personal papers concern Richards’s service in the U.S. Army Air Corps, his citizenship, financial and medical information, and other personal matters. (MW)

A full description of the collection can be found online: Lloyd Richards Papers (http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.richardsl).

Image: Playwright August Wilson and director Lloyd Richards (in foreground) for Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” which premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987. Copyright, the Yale Repertory Theatre; Lloyd Richards and Athol Fugard, 1987.

Research Fellow Lecture

Talking Diaspora: Ophelia Settle Egypt’s Interviews with Former Slaves
and the Origins of the Social History of American Slavery

A lecture by  Clare Corbould
Beiencke Library A. Bartlett Giamatti Visiting Research Fellow

Thursday 21^st at 11:45am
Yale African American Studies Department
Room 201, 81 Wall Street

Clare Corbould is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney. Her teaching includes units on African American history and culture and United States imperialism. In 2009, she published Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem,1919-1939 (Harvard UP). Professor Corbould is currently undertaking a project on interwar social science research, focusing on interviews conducted with former slaves. She is co-editing several collections on the role of the Revolution in American Life.

As the A. Bartlett Giamatti Visiting Research Fellow at the Beinecke Library, Professor Corbould is researching a new project: James Weldon Johnson: Life and Times of an American Polymath.