In 1948, Richards moved from Detroit to New York City. With Lipton's help, Richards auditioned for a couple Broadway productions and for the
Actors Studio, but received rejections.
Acting tenure Richards acted in low-paying
off-Broadway productions while working odd jobs and receiving benefits provisioned by the
GI Bill. Richards began working at the
Paramount Pictures executive dining room as a waiter. He continued working there until
A Raisin in the Sun, leading studio head
Adolph Zukor to exclaim that "our waiter walked out of here and directed a Broadway play!" Richards debuted as an actor on Broadway in 1950 in the one-act play
Freight, which ran for 5 performances. In 1957, Richards made his second appearance on Broadway in
Molly Kazan's
The Egghead. Richards played a duplicitous communist student who
Karl Malden's liberal professor vehemently defends from charges of communism.
Brooks Atkinson reviewed his performance favorably, writing that "Mr. Richards plays the villain with enough skill, intelligence, and bravado to win the admiration of the audience in the end." A then-unknown
James Earl Jones debuted on Broadway as Richards's understudy.
Paul Mann Actors Workshop While performing in one off-Broadway play under director
Paul Mann, Mann invited him to assist him with his acting school. Through the workshop, he met his wife, the dancer Barbara Davenport, and
Sidney Poitier. Richards became good friends with Poitier at the time as too relatively poor actors trying to break through on Broadway. One anecdote Richards shared told of how the two men shared a hot dog at one point, as neither wanted to spare the money on their own. At one point in this fallow period, Poitier promised him an opportunity as director, should Poitier earn a starring role. Richards also taught Moscow Art Theatre acting technique alongside Morris Carnovsky. According to writer
Samuel G. Freedman, the technique Mann and Richards used took a middle ground between the sociological techniques of
Stella Adler and the psychiatric techniques of
Lee Strasberg. After the Chicago
tryout in February 1959,
Chicago Tribune Claudia "Acidy" Cassidy gave the play a mostly positive review and wrote that Richards's direction was "so right that [the play's] false spots are probably on their way out this morning." The play debuted on March 11, 1959 at the
Ethel Barrymore Theatre and ran for 530 performances. As it was the first Broadway show directed by a black person and written by a black woman, featuring a story about contemporary black characters, there was some doubt that it would be accepted by largely white, largely upper class audiences. On its opening night, the play receiving standing ovation from audiences, with Poitier calling from the stage for Hansberry and Richards to be given their own ovations. The Broadway production received positive reviews. Brooks Atkinson wrote that Richards's direction brought about "explosions in the performance. But the explosions never give an impression of being arbitrary."
Kenneth Tynan praised the play, concluding that Richards specifically had "done a sensible, sensitive, and impeccable job." Richards also directed the European premiere in July 1959, which originated at the
Bristol Hippodrome before transferring to the
Adelphi Theatre on
London's
West End. British critics gave the production mixed reviews. Richards did not direct Hansberry's future plays, though they maintained a friendly relationship until her death in 1963. In 1959,
James Baldwin corresponded with Hansberry "begging" for her to send along his manuscript for
The Amen Corner to Richards for his feedback.
Other directing work In the years after
A Raisin in the Sun, Richards directed multiple other productions on Broadway: •
The Long Dream (1960,
Ketti Frings) •
The Moon Besieged (1962, Seyril Schochen) •
I Had a Ball (1964,
Jack Lawrence &
Stan Freeman) •
The Yearling musical (1965, Michael Leonard & Herbert Martin) •
Paul Robeson (1978,
Philip Hayes Dean) Richards was attached to
Peter Feibleman's
Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright, which premiered on Broadway in 1962 under
Joshua Logan's direction. He also directed a version of
Arthur Miller's
The Crucible—based on its original, non-Broadway script—for Boston University in May 1962. Defining the period before he joined the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, critic
Michael Feingold noted that what Richards "did after the huge success of
Raisin was immediately
not do another black family play." Richards also directed a production of James Baldwin's
The Amen Corner starring
Claudia McNeill to tour in Europe
, which ran on Broadway in a separate (but concurrent) production directed by
Frank Silvera. The play—produced by
Ellis Haizlip and Rudolph Stoiber—premiered at the
Vienna Festival in June 1965, with subsequent stagings at the
Théâtre des Nations, West End's
Savile Theatre, and at venues in
Amsterdam,
Munich,
Jerusalem, and other cities. Baldwin preferred Richards and Haizlip's production and unsuccessfully tried to intercede to stop Silvera's production from advancing to Broadway in its favor. == The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center ==