Lanyard Williams was an actor/composer and community activist whom IMDb lists with 5 TV appearances between 1980 and 1993, and one composer credit for a made-for-TV movie. He died February 7, 2015 (age 59) in Las Vegas.
In 1983, Lanyard A. Williams was Audelco nominee for Best Actor for his role in the Off-Broadway production of Parting. A native of Las Vegas, he began his career at the age of 10 at the University of Nevada’s Children’s Theatre. Mr. Williams is cofounder of Las Vegas’ most successful experimental theatre company, Theatre Expose. He has appeared in over 60 stage productions which include Streamers, Inherit the Wind, Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar among others. In New York he was a resident actor with Periwinkle Productions, a touring children’s theatre company, where he was featured in their production of Halfway There. Married to playwright Judi Ann Mason, Mr. Williams has appeared in the Theatre of Universal Images’ production of The River Niger and Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death.
“There are a lot of very serious black artists in this city [Las Vegas]who truly want to raise the bar,” says actor Lanyard Williams. “The answer is to keep putting it out there. It’s hard to get people to come out and review the shows, or just have them marketed correctly.”
Some of that is at the feet of the local media. But the rest has to do with the nature of the city itself. Vegas, as Williams notes, is a “let’s go out and have a good time” kind of place. “A lot of people don’t want to go to the theater to be educated or depressed or moved. They want to go in and skin and grin and laugh.”
| Credit Type | Production | Season |
|---|---|---|
| Actor | Trinity | 1987-88 Season |