Lloyd Richards Interview (page: 5 / 6) Tony Award-Winning Director	Print Interview

You have chosen a field, chosen a career that abounds with critics and criticism. How do you handle criticism?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: I don't work for the critics. The critics are something that happens to the work. If I try to guess what the critics might like... I know my producers do that all the time. I've been a producer, and I am a producer, but I do the things I like. I do the things that really affect me. I do the things that mean something to me, where something of me is being articulated through the work. I say what I have to say. Now that may be accepted, it may not be accepted. I say it the best I can, and if they don't accept it, okay.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

They may control, to a certain extent, my livelihood, but they don't control my life, and they don't control my art. They are there, and sometimes unfortunately so. I think that we are in a position now where we don't have enough critics to balance things out. There used to be a time when there were 15 newspapers in New York. So there were a lot of points of view at work that might be expressed. Now there are very few. So much hangs on so little, and that's unfortunate. When I think of the investment of time, of energy, of life, that is involved in the creation of a theater piece, it's sometimes sad what happens to it. That's why we drive some of our potential artists into an area like television. It's done before reviews come out. Okay, go on to the next one. That's what is expected to be. But in the theater, you spend one, two, three years of your life invested in the work, and then you take it and you put it up somewhere, and wham! Its gone. It's not easy. I can understand people who work trying to anticipate that. But I don't find it helps the work any at all.

How do you handle the pressures, the responsibilities, investing all of this into something that could be finished in a day or two days? You must feel responsibility to the work itself. You feel responsibility to the investors. You feel responsibility because it's your life. There has got to be a lot of pressure.

Lloyd Richards: There is a lot of pressure. But that's not what it's about. The pressure comes for other reasons. The pressure comes from other people who have a financial investment. They bet on you. There used to be tip sheets that used to say, this is so-and-so directing, he's a three-hit, two-flop man. You were rated like a horse. Fine, good, great. That's their way of doing things. That's betting on horses. They're betting on your past. What's sad to me, there used to be very wonderful producers who understood the process. But now you can be involved in a project with people who have the money it in, who don't understand the working process. What they understand is hire and fire. That is what they understand. Why? "Because I don't see it there today, it is not there." No, it's not there today, but it's coming. Do you see where it started? Do you see the goal? Do you see where it is in relation to that? Do you see the investment in it that can bring it to that? Not a lot of people can do that, not everybody can appreciate that. So strange things happen. And lack of trust, which means a lack of knowledge of both process and talent.

I am going to remember that. That hits home in many ways. You've probably answered this, but in so many words, what does it take to achieve something in the theater, in drama, in your field?

Lloyd Richards: Well, beyond talent--that is the indefinable thing that is involved--it takes commitment.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: One person once said to me, "The theater is a place of survivors, people who have survived all those things you are talking about." And what makes them survive, I assume, is a real deep belief in themselves... a need to express that, and then having the tools to do it with. I guess I may have some tools. I know in other areas of the arts, I don't have the tools. I can have a wonderful image, but you put an easel and a brush in my hand, and a palette, and all those colors there, I cannot make that vision, as wonderful as it is, realize itself up on the canvas. I can't do that. I don't have the technique, and I may not have the talent for it, but I certainly don't have the technique. In the theater, I have some technique. And I'm presumptive enough to think that after this length of time, maybe I had a little talent somewhere along the way.

What are your hopes, for a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. What do you hope for these people who come through here?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: That they'll make a contribution to the theater. That's what I hope. We try and prepare them to do that. What I try to do at the Yale School of Drama, or have tried to do, is to create an environment where I can take the pressures off, and put the pressures on. Take the pressures off, in terms of success and failure, and put the pressures on in terms of acquiring knowledge, acquiring skills, acquiring craft, and utilizing that, and taking chances with that. To create that environment and support is my goal. So what do you do? You get the best people you can, in terms of the faculty, in terms of the administrators and staff, and you provide opportunities. You go out and you raise money, you beg and you borrow, and you do whatever you have to do to help to create that environment. Then you get the most talented students, and I think we've been able to do that to a great degree. Every year, since I've been here, we audition the applicants for the acting program. Over 1000 applicants a year. We take 15 in the acting program. There are certain questions that we ask ourselves, past talent, having to do with commitment. Having to do with, "Will this person make a contribution to the art, to the theater?" We select in those terms, and we put together a company. We do the same with every other program in it, trying to create here an environment that is stimulating, where the students are stimulating to one another, challenging one another, and have a faculty that is supporting and challenging. That's what we try to create.

Given the kind of expenditure of energy and imagination that exists in a program like this where students begin at eight o'clock in the morning, they go to classes until two o'clock in the afternoon, then everybody goes into rehearsal of some kind at two o'clock in the afternoon, and they work until midnight, and they perform, they support one another, they support the work, and they are studying continually, but what is sad is that the theater is not able to provide the kind of opportunity to utilize that energy, and that imagination to its fullest. We prepare them for that kind of a theater and that kind of experience, so they will take that with them wherever they go. They will be working in terms of that, whatever situation you put them in.

That leads me to a question, that I know is dear to you, about the place of the arts in America. In light of the NEA controversy, and the debate about the role of government, what place do you see for the arts in this country?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Lloyd Richards: The arts are a reflection of our society, of its concerns, of its aspirations, of its possibilities. In every respect, it is also a challenge to our society. Those are its roles, and sometimes those roles become crusty. It was Ed Steinmetz who said a good writer is as a second government in his own country which is why the government generally supports mediocrity rather than real talent. What is he saying? He is saying that the role of the arts is to challenge, is to question. It is not simply to pat on the back and support and wave. There are many, many responsibilities that it has, one of which is to question our society as it exists, and lead it to the possibility of making other choices. Sometimes, it isn't to say that every artist is correct in his projection, but at least the challenge is there. Answer it again. There are times when you step on a toe, and if that toe is as influential as a few toes were, then you may have a bumpy time. But that does not change the role of the arts. And any true artist will not be changed by it.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

It may change, which it has, the economic support of the arts in this country, and that's unfortunate. But what it really affects is the fringe areas in a way where you get less money to support the seedlings, some of which are going to not work. And that's unfortunate. There has got to be a willingness to accept failure, or to fail. We do it in science. We do it all the time. I've seen this marvelous movie, the old development of our space program, where you see the rockets. They are there: they fume, they flop over. We understand that in relation to science; they waste a lot of money. We expend very little on the arts in this country, shamefully little, unfortunately so. There is so much more that could be done, that should be done. But, we will survive it.

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