Lloyd Richards, Doctor of Fine Arts
Christopher Durang, John Guare, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson — these and many other playwrights you have discovered and nurtured, largely through directing for more than thirty years the National Playwrights Conference. So generous has been your attention to them that one dubbed you “the Black Santa Claus.” But this ability to husband new voices is but one of your theatrical legacies. You have applied your groundbreaking style of directing to hundreds of plays. You helped found the regional theater movement that has elevated serious drama across the country. In your unprecedented twelve years as Dean of the Yale School of Drama you are credited with “transforming it into the most prestigious professional drama training program in the country.” As Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre you set an example of risk-taking “in an art form increasingly controlled by the bottom line.” And beginning with A Raisin in the Sun in 1959, as the first Black director of the first play of a Black woman playwright on Broadway, you have pioneered the presentation to audiences of the African American experience. In a career now spanning more than 50 years, no one, it is widely acknowledged, has brought more substance to the American stage.
I hereby declare you recipient of the honorary degree Doctor of Fine Arts, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 4, 2006