NYTW Opens THE LITTLE FOXES Today, 9/21

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) opens The Little Foxes tonight, September 21, 2010, at 7:00pm.  The production runs through October 31, 2010.

Acclaimed director Ivo van Hove returns to NYTW to take on one of Lillian Hellman's most well-known plays, The Little Foxes.  Van Hove's fresh vision of this iconic play will be a study of how women of different races and classes contend with male aggression, power, and domination.  Elizabeth Marvel, who has memorably collaborated with van Hove at NYTW, playing the title role of Hedda Gabler and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, will play Regina Giddens, the strong and determined woman at the center of Hellman's web of deceit.

One of the most celebrated American Playwrights of the 20th century, Lillian Hellman created incendiary and powerful plays that continue to be performed internationally.  These plays include The Children's Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1939), Toys in the Attic (1960) and a musical adaptation of Voltaire's Candide with Leonard Bernstein in 1960.  She is the recipient of numerous theatrical awards including: the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1941 and 1960), a Gold Medal from the Academy of Arts and Letters for Distinguished Achievement in the Theatre (1964); and election to the Theatre Hall of Fame (1973).  In addition to being a celebrated playwright, Hellman is also an award winning author receiving recognition for her three published memoirs-An Unfinished Woman (1969), which won the National Book Award; Pentimento (1973); and Scoundrel Time (1976).

Born in New Orleans, Hellman began her career as a play reader in New York City and later as a script reader in Hollywood where she met Dashiell Hammett who would become her companion until his death in 1961.  Together, Hellman and Hammett in addition to their illustrious careers as writers became well-known political and social activists.  Lillian Hellman died on June 30, 1984 at the age of 79 at her home on Martha's Vineyard.

Ivo van Hove began his career as a stage director in 1981, working with plays he had written himself (Ziektekiemen, Geruchten). He was artistic manager at AKT, Akt-Vertical and De Tijd, successively. Between 1990 and 2000 he was the director at Het Zuidelijk Toneel. Since 2001, Van Hove has been general director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam (the Amsterdam Theatre Group). He has coordinated productions at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Venice Biennale, theHolland Festival, Theater der Welt in Germany, the Wiener Festwochen in Vienna, as well as working in London, Canada, Lisbon, Paris, Verona, Hannover, Porto, Cairo, Poland and New York. He has directed companies from the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, the Staatstheater in Stuttgart and the New York Theatre Workshop. He produced Thuisfront for Dutch television and his first cinematic film, Amsterdam, came out in 2009.

Mr. van Hove directed the musical Rent for Joop Van Den Ende. At the Vlaamse Opera, he staged a production of Lulu (Alban Berg) and the complete Ring Cycle by Wagner (2006 - 2008). He put on a production of Janàcek's De Zaak Makropoulos and Tchaikovsky's Lolanta for the De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. From 1998 to 2004, Ivo van Hove was festival manager of the Holland Festival, where he presented an annual selection of interNational Theatre, music, opera and dance. Since 1984, Van Hove has worked as part of the artistic management of the Department of Dramatic Art at Hogeschool Antwerpen.  At the Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Van Hove has recently directed Angels in America by Tony Kushner, the marathon performance of Romeinse Tragedies based on the work of Shakespeare, Opening Night by John Cassavetes, Rocco And His Brothers by Luchino Visconti and Teorema based on the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini (in partnership with the Ruhrtriennale), Antonioni-project by Michelangelo Antonioni, Kreten en gefluister (Cries and Whispers) by Ingmar Bergman, La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice) by Jean Cocteau and Zomertrilogie (Summer Trilogy) by Carlo Goldoni.  Past productions with New York Theatre Workshop include More Stately Mansions (1997) A Streetcar Named Desire (1999), Alice in Bed (2001), Hedda Gabler (2004), and The Misanthrope (2008).

New York Theatre Workshop, now celebrating its 28th season, is a leading voice in the world of Off-Broadway and within the theatre community in New York and around the world. NYTW has emerged as a premiere incubator of important new theatre, honoring its mission to explore perspectives on our collective history and respond to the events and institutions that shape our lives. In addition, NYTW is known for its innovative adaptations of classic repertory. Each season, from its home in New York's East Village neighborhood, NYTW presents three to five new productions, over 80 readings, and numerous workshop productions, for over 45,000 audience members.  Over the past 28 years, NYTW has developed and produced over 100 new, fully staged works, including Jonathan Larson's Rent, Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul, Doug Wright's Quills, Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde, Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla, and Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, Far Away, and A Number.

The 2002 remounting of Martha Clarke's seminal work Vienna: Lusthaus and subsequent American tour was one of the longest-running productions in NYTW's history.  NYTW supports artists in all stages of their careers by maintaining a series of workshop programs including work-in-progress readings, summer residencies, and minority artist fellowships. In 1991, NYTW received an OBIE Award for Sustained Achievement and in 2000 was designated to be part of the Leading National Theatres Program by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
New York Theatre Workshop is extremely grateful for the generous support of all of our funders. 
New York Theatre Workshop is extremely grateful for the generous support of all of our funders and would like to especially acknowledge: Fund for the City of New York/Open Society Foundations; the Shubert Foundation; the William and Mary Greve Foundation; the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs for their outstanding leadership of arts funding in New York City.

The Little Foxes plays at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and Bowery.  The regular performance schedule is Tuesday at 7:00pm; Wednesday through Friday at 8:00pm; Saturday at 3:00pm and 8:00pm; Sunday at 2:00pm and 7:00pm.  There will be a special student matinee on Thursday, September 23 at 1pm. The Little Foxes runs through Sunday, October 31, 2010.  Tickets start at  $70 and may be purchased online at www.ticketcentral.com, 24 hours a day, seven days a week or by phoning Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200.  For exact dates and times of performance, visit www.nytw.org.

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