Lloyd Richards Interview (page: 3 / 6) Tony Award-Winning Director	Print Interview

What inspires a young man in Detroit, a young black man, in the 1930s and '40s, to pursue this life? Why the theater?

Lloyd Richards: I guess the theater because I couldn't do anything else. I'm not sure exactly when it began. I do remember certain things.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: I remember studying Shakespeare as a young person in school, and I remember an assignment to memorize a soliloquy, which I did. I was asked to stand up in front of the class and do it. I did it and I found myself saying beautiful words, phrases, thoughts that I agreed with, and I found myself expressing myself through someone else's words. There were people there and they responded; a connection was made. And I guess there was a connection made in me, that I felt something, or received something in that. That was deeply satisfying.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

That didn't mean I left the front of that class and went into the theater.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: In Detroit where I grew up -- I was born in Toronto Canada -- there was not a theater that I went to. I did not look at that as a way to make a living, or a way to make a life, which is really what it amounts to. I looked at it as an experience. I had a few more of those as time went on. The theater was not a place a young black man aspired to, because you were no images there, you were not reflected there. You were not reflected in pictures around you, or on the stage around you, except occasionally [by actors like] Canada Lee and Paul Robeson.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: I found myself in college. I was a pre-law student. Why pre-law? Because that was a way not only to make a living, but to secure one's life. There were certain things that were open where you did that. If you were going to college, you really went for those things. You became a doctor, you became a lawyer; forsaking all that, you became a teacher or a social worker or a minister. That was it. And of the five, I thought law was something I aspired to. So I went to college in pre-law. But I found myself taking what was called in that day speech courses and interpretive reading courses. Gradually, doing things in the theatre, but I was still pre-law until I found I had more speech courses than pre-law courses.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: After three years of it, when I should have gone to law school, I ended up not going to law school and determining that I would have a life in the theater. I had to decide at that point what security was, what it meant. Was security property? Was security money in the bank? Or was security getting up in the morning and not counting the hours? Having a life, not a job. The theater was something that seemed to satisfy my life-need. I was not concerned about, would I make it, would I not make it, would I be successful, would I not be successful. The opportunity to function in that area was something that compelled me and I ended up in the theater.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

Was there a moment, an event or episode where the light went on in your head, and you said, "This is what I have to do?

Lloyd Richards: No. I found myself doing it. I was already doing it, and all I had to do was accept what I was doing. I guess the moment was when it was time to go to law school, and I didn't go to law school. Then events happened after that. But I had made the decision, and I accepted the fact that I had made that decision. That was what it was going to be.

Everybody told me I had made the wrong decision. That was not the way to make a life. What would happen to me? I just had to take that, accept it, and go on. I had made my decision.

What was the first play you saw that had an impact on you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: Certainly in college I saw the theater. Things that were memorable to me: Paul Robeson in Othello, Canada Lee in The Duchess of Malfi, and as Bigger Thomas in Native Son, and other plays. Those were people who began to inspire me in a very personal way, because they were black and there were very few of them, and they, in their exception, said, "Okay, something is possible." I determined that, yes, it was going to be a hard job. I may be rejected. There may be many times that I might be rejected, and that was true. But I wouldn't be rejected because I wasn't prepared. So, I set about preparing myself.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: My time in school at Wayne University, which was a grand place to be for that, was used to contribute toward my future, my life. There were the questions of would I teach. When I talked to my advisors at Wayne University because I attended Wayne University, they suggested that they might help me find a place in a black college somewhere to teach. Thanks a lot, but that isn't what I intended. But Wayne had a wonderful program. It had a speakers bureau where any organization could call the university and get a speaker on any side of any subject; I was a part of that. They had a reader's bureau where any organization could call and get readings of poetry, and other things on any subject or for any occasion; and I was part of that. You went out on those things, and you [were paid] five dollars, which was very important at that time.

I began to work with the radio guild at Wayne. They had a wonderful radio guild, they were very talented people there, most of whom worked in radio in Detroit and nationally. Many people came out of Detroit at that time, and they were our faculty. I was taught by them, got an opportunity to work on radio because we did original radio out of the university. I did everything. I acted, I directed, I did sound, I did all of the things that one does in radio. I was trained in that, and ultimately in theater, but there were very few roles in the university for a young aspiring black actor to play. So there were problems about that, little to do, but one way or another, we found ways to do them.

What was life like, growing up in Detroit during the depression? What was your life like as a kid?

Lloyd Richards: As a kid? My father was a master carpenter. I was born in Canada, of parents with a Jamaican background. Ultimately we came to Detroit because Henry Ford advertised work for five dollars a day, which in the '20s was a good deal of money. So our father went ahead, and my mother and the flock followed. I grew up on the east side of Detroit, attending school, and finally we moved to the west side, bought a house which we ultimately moved out of, and moved to North Detroit where we bought another house.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: My father died when I was nine years old, and there was a flock of five and my mother kept us all together. Although how, during the depression, who knew? There were things like aid to dependent children. There were things like welfare, which we were a part of. But she was determined that those of us who wished to would attend college. I ultimately managed to do that--worked my way through college. Growing up in Detroit was both fun, and tough. Tough in the sense of where is the next meal coming from, where is the next paycheck coming from? My mother took in laundry; I remember the kitchen, filled with large white shirts that she was doing for some businessman living out somewhere. My mother did that, and many other things, so that we could not only survive, but find that way to make a life. A wonderful woman, a very strong human being. I had great, great affection for her. She did the impossible. There were suggestions when my father died that the family be broken up, that this uncle take one, or somebody else take another, but she would have none of that. The family had to stay together, and we did.

And how were you affected by that? Did you have to go to work?

Lloyd Richards: Oh, yes, I worked.

What did you do?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: I worked in a barber shop one time. I sold papers from the time I was eight years old or something like that, which was tough because people didn't pay you. There you were running down the street delivering papers, and you'd go around on Saturdays to collect the few pence that it was. That was tough because people took advantage of kids. I sold magazines, Ladies Home Journal, and all those other things that one does to make a buck. Then I worked in a barber shop, I shined shoes, cleaned up the barber shop. At college, I ran the elevator. You do all kinds of things. That makes it possible not only to live, because it wasn't just subsistence that we were concerned with. We were concerned with the future, and making a future possible, by going to school, getting an education, and making a life.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

What kept you in school? It seems to me it would have been easy enough for you to say, "Look, I've got to work, I've got to help to support the family." What kept you going?

Lloyd Richards: Well, the expectation of the family. The support of the family. My older brother, he went to work, he dropped out of school to work after high school. My younger brother got involved in a training program at Henry Ford's where he studied engineering, and received payment for it. We expected things of one another. Not only the immediate family, but my uncles and aunts. The family expected that you would do something to better yourself, to better your life. That expectation and support was very important to me. A lot of pride in my family. I remember my old aunt, the head of the family, she would say, "You are a Coote." That was my mother's maiden name. "And a Coote does..." And she'd go on. You listened to Aunt May, and you did what she said. All the rest of the family were all very supportive of one another; they were trying to do the same things.

What kind of a student were you? What were you like in school?

Lloyd Richards: Well, I might be considered a pretty good student. I worked hard.

Were there any teachers or books that influenced you when you were a kid in school?

Lloyd Richards: I can't recall that far back the books that influenced me. I remember a red-headed teacher, when I was in the early grades, maybe first, second, third grade. Mrs. McGinnis, I recall that she was particularly supportive. And other people like that.

Could a kid under those circumstances have pastimes? What did you do for fun? What about sports?

Lloyd Richards: Well, we would play baseball in the street, ride bicycles. I loved swimming, and we'd do that. But of course, you weren't encouraged in high school, because there were no black kids on the swimming team. The swimming teams practiced in the summer at some country club or were taken places where it was not at that time acceptable to bring a young black person. I did win decathlon medals and things like that--which we did in grade school--for running, jumping and what not, but I was not an athlete.

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