Phylicia Rashad will direct "A Raisin in the Sun" next season at Westport Country Playhouse in Wesport, Conn., Playbill reported Thursday.
The new production will run Oct. 9-Nov. 3, 2012. Rashad, 63, who is best known for her portrayal of Clair Huxtable on "The Cosby Show", has already helmed the play once at the Ebony Repertory Theatre. Rashad made her directorial debut at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, directing August Wilson's play "Gem of the Ocean.”
The New York Times also reported this week that Rashad will assume Fordham University's Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre, a position created after the actor made a $2 million donation to his alma mater's theatre arts department. She will teach an acting course called “Creating a Character" at the university, located in the Bronx, N.Y.
He said Rashad “will provide the care, compassion and that extra push to help take students where they’re meant to go.”
Rashad, 63, already won a Tony for her portrayal of matriarch Lena Younger in the Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry's Pulitzer-Prize winning drama, which is set in Chicago in the 1950s.
