The Little Foxes
Text: Lillian Hellman
Direction: Ivo van Hove
September 10 – October 31, 2010
Study Guide for
Students and Teachers
Dear Educator,
Thank you for bringing your students to New York
Theatre Workshop‘s production of The Little Foxes by
Lillian Hellman, directed by Ivo van Hove.
In order to help you make this the fullest experience for
your students, we‘ve prepared this Study Guide with
articles, background information, and jumping-off
points for class discussion. We hope you find it useful!
If you have any comments or suggestions for future
Guides, please don‘t hesitate to contact me at
BrynT@nytw.org.
We welcome you and your students to our theatre, and
we hope to see you at New York Theatre Workshop
again soon. To learn more about our Education
Initiatives, please visit www.nytw.org/education.asp.
Enjoy the performance.
NYTW‘s Education Initiatives provide access to the
vision and methods of the artist, and enable
audiences of all ages to participate in a community
of dynamic learning where the developmental
process, the final production, and the surrounding
exchange of ideas have a profound impact on all
involved. These initiatives strive to bring all
members of our artistic family, which includes our
audience members, closer to the creative process.
As we often collaborate with artists whose work
takes risks and challenges theatrical forms, the
artistic process at NYTW rarely follows a defined
path. Our education initiatives embrace this
iconoclastic approach, allowing us to craft each
program and partnership with detail and creativity.
Learning Workshop is NYTW‘s multidisciplinary
theatre education program that supports middle
and high school students‘ creative development as
artists and audience members by critically engaging
them in the artistic process surrounding our
productions.
With continual input from New York City public
school educators, theatre artists, community
advocates, and NYTW staff members, Learning
Workshop strives to achieve key goals:
Sincerely,
Promote students‘ critical thinking through the
medium of theatre
Bryn Thorsson
Director of Education
NYTW‘s Education Initiatives are made possible
through the generous encouragement of Con Edison,
the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, the Michael
Tuch Foundation, the Manhattan Borough President‘s
Office, the Office of Council Member Margaret Chin
and the New York State Council for the Arts-Empire
State Partnership.
By introducing students to provocative and
challenging
theatre
and
fostering
their
understanding and discussion of performances,
NYTW aims to enrich young people‘s visual,
textual, and critical literacies.
Increase cultural participation among young people
By engaging students in the collaborative process of
theatre-making and offering them the opportunity
to connect theatre to their own coursework and
lives, NYTW hopes to increase youth attendance at,
involvement in, and advocacy for the performing
arts.
Build a greater sense of community
Study Guide researched and written by
Katie Palmer, Education Intern
By including students in meaningful conversations
with our artists and the activities that make up the
fabric of the organization, NYTW hopes to grow
meaningful relationships with the students at our
partner schools and encourage them to think of
NYTW as a resource and creative space to return to
in the future.
―Take
us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil our vines; for
our vines have tender grapes.‖
--- Song of Solomon, the Hebrew Bible
Foxes are burrowing animals. Their dens are
usually an underground burrow, a cavity under
boulders, or a crevice in a rocky outcrop.
Lillian Hellman took the title of The Little Foxes
from this quotation from the Bible. Although the
characters of Hellman‘s play are human beings,
they possess many of the traits we often associate
with foxes. For a clearer idea of what that might
mean, we can start with a description of the
animals themselves.
Foxes are in the same family as dogs but with
some noticeable differences:
 Slightly smaller than a medium-sized dog
 Distinctive muzzle on their long, narrow
snout
 Bushy tail
 Not domesticated (save the rare exception
of the Russian Silver Fox)
The director and designer of The Little Foxes
took inspiration for the set design from the
fox-holes these animals live in.
Foxes are usually not pack animals. They live in
small family groupings with a typical litter size
being 4-6 pups.
Foxes feed on live prey, killing them quickly
using a pouncing technique they perfect in their
adolescence. Foxes feed on rodents, birds,
rabbits, and other small game, but they‘re not
picky. Foxes will eat fish, frogs, fruits,
vegetables, worms, and even garbage and pet
food if they live near humans.
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Prompt: When you attend the
performance, notice what the set feels
like. Is it dark or light? Claustrophobic
or airy? Where are the entrances?
What type of people do you imagine
would live in a home like that? What
does the color make you think of?
Over 37 types of foxes exist all over the world,
which explains their prevalence in folklore on
every continent. In cultures all over the world,
foxes are associated with trickery and
cleverness. They are portrayed as being
cunning, resourceful, and deceitful, often with
their primary motive being self-interest.
Sometimes we use qualities we equate with
foxes to describe humans:
 ―fox-like‖ – having the qualities of a fox
(tricky, clever)
 ―foxy‖ – attractive
 ―out-fox‖ – outsmart, out-wit; a fox will
use its cunning intelligence to get what
it wants, not brute force or strength
Prompt:
Imagine a human with the qualities of a fox. What would you assume about a
character if you knew him or her to be a fox? What kind of situations would this
human ―fox‖ get themselves into and also be able to get themselves out of? Write a
monologue from your ―fox‖ character‘s perspective.
Imagine what would happen within a family of ―foxes‖ – if every human in the family
had fox-like qualities. What type of conflicts might arise as every member of the
family tried to ―out-fox‖ the other foxes? Write a short story about their interactions.
As we know, foxes prey on birds. What if there were a human character named
―Birdie‖ in your story? What qualities might you assume that person would possess?
How might the family of foxes and the bird interact? How might the bird ever become
the hero of the story?
A definition:
PERSONIFICATION:
1. A person or thing typifying a certain quality
or idea; an embodiment or exemplification.
2. A figure of speech in which inanimate
objects or abstractions are endowed with
human qualities or are represented as
possessing human form.
(www.answers.com)
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Lillian Hellman
In 1952, at the height of McCarthyism and the fear
of Communism infiltrating the U.S government and
culture, she was one of the many artists brought
before the House Un-American Activities
Committee. Although she discussed her own
political sympathies, she refused to speak of anyone
else‘s involvement with the American Communist
Party. In her address to the Committee she famously
said, ―I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit
this year‘s fashion, even though I long ago came to
the conclusion that I was not a political person and
could have no comfortable place in any political
group.‖ Her defiance caused major Hollywood
studios to blacklist her, effectively ending her film
and theatre career.
The playwright Lillian Hellman was born in
Louisiana in 1905 and grew up in New Orleans and
New York City. The time she spent in the South
with her mother‘s family influenced the Southern
characters she wrote about in her eventual scripts.
By 1935 Hellman was in Hollywood as a script
reader for MGM. She was encouraged to write by
her long time companion Dashiell Hammett and her
first professional play, The Children‘s Hour, was a
Broadway hit. That success opened the door for The
Little Foxes to debut on Broadway in 1939 with the
famous actress Tallulah Bankhead. The Little Foxes
opened to rave reviews, played 410 performances
and was made into a film in 1941 starring Bette
Davis, for which Hellman wrote the screenplay.
She did, however, continue to write and published
three memoirs from 1969 to 1976. Lillian Hellman
died of natural causes in 1984.
Hellman always intended the family drama of the
Hubbards, the central family in The Little Foxes, to
be written as a trilogy, with The Little Foxes being
the middle story. She wrote Another Part of the
Forest as a prequel in 1946, but never wrote the last
part of the story.
Hellman wrote politically charged plays revealing
behavior usually masked in polite society and
seldom exposed on stage. Through her work, and
the artistic company she kept, Hellman was a
controversially political figure.
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Critics of the time complained Hellman‘s work was
too melodramatic. She did not believe they had the
correct definition of melodrama. Hellman believed
melodrama to be an important tool to show true
human nature, not a style to be dismissed as over-thetop and exaggerated.
WHAT LILLIAN
SAYS:
―I think the word melodrama, in our time, has come to be used
in an almost illiterate manner. By definition it is a violent
dramatic piece… when violence is actually the needed stuff of
the work and comes towards a large enough end, it has been
and always will be in the good writer‘s field.‖
―If you believe, as the
Greeks did, that man is at
the mercy of the gods, then
you write tragedy. The end
is inevitable from the
beginning. But if you
believe that man can solve
his own problems and is at
nobody‘s mercy, then you
will probably write
melodrama.‖
What Others Say About Her:
“Miss Hellman has made an adult horror-play. Her little foxes are wolves that eat their own kind.‖
Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, February 16, 1939
―The Little Foxes will not increase your admiration for mankind. It is cold and cynical. But it is a very
exciting picture to watch in a comfortably objective way, especially if you enjoy expert stabbing-in-theback.‖
Bosley Crowther, The New York Times Film Review
―This social melodrama, or whatever term one applies to it, continues to captivate audiences no longer
enmeshed in the debate between Marxism and capitalism. The underlying themes of greed and revenge
continue to strike a responsive chord in audiences whenever the play is revived, and its terse, witty dialogue
and tense, streamlined plot draw each new audience under its remarkable power.‖
Carole L. Hamilton, Drama for Students
Past Productions of The Little Foxes
Bette Davis as Regina in the 1941 Film
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Kathryn Meisle, Lindsey Wochley,
Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey 2009.
Photo: Joe Geinert
RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction refers to the time after the Civil War when the United
States of America attempted to re-build economically and socially.
Civil War and
Amendments:
Reconstruction
Life in the Reconstructed South:
Racism and prejudice were ingrained in people‘s
way of life and daily interactions. Rules such as
the Jim Crow laws made it permissible to
discriminate against African-Americans in
transportation, education, accommodations, and
courts.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, hundreds
of thousands of Africans were shipped to the
United States as slaves. As the U. S. continued to
grow, there was a lot of disagreement between
the North and the South regarding the moral and
economic issues associated with slavery.
Immediately after Abraham Lincoln became
president in 1861, 11 Southern states, where
slavery was still legal, seceded from the Union.
The first shots of the Civil War were fired April
12, 1861. In the middle of the Civil War on
January 1, 1963, President Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation declaring all slaves
in southern states free.
In many ways African-Americans‘ quality of life
did not improve once freed. The former slaves
had rent and taxes to pay and very little money
to live on. They were still, for the most part,
uneducated and illiterate. Many only had the
skills they learned on the plantations and there
was still cotton to pick.
Most former slaves became share-croppers on
the very land they once worked as slaves. Sharecropping meant the white landowner would
divide up his land so each black family got a
small portion to live on and work. In exchange
for equipment and seed, the person sharecropping would give the landowner up to half of
his crop. Other men and women continued
being domestic help in white people‘s homes. In
The Little Foxes, Addie & Cal are AfricanAmerican servants in the Hubbard household,
and are likely the children of freed slaves, if not
former slaves themselves.
However, this changed very little for those
African-Americans living in the South. It wasn‘t
until the Civil War finally ended April 9, 1865
that former slaves were given rights through
additions to the U.S. Constitution called the
Reconstruction Amendments. The 13th, 14th,
and 15th Amendments guaranteed citizenship to
all former slaves. Unfortunately, it was not as
easy for the former slaves as these legal
documents made it sound.
A copy of the Emancipation
Proclamation
White Landowner weighing sharecroppers‘ cotton
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This shift to industry promoted the rise of a
merchant class of white men who were
business-oriented and intent on maximizing
money and opportunity in this changing
South. This new, North-infused economy
was eclipsing the pre-War way of life. The
old plantation owners were resistant to these
new business plans. Therefore, this class of
white men who were willing to move
forward became the new ruling class of the
South. In The Little Foxes, this old way of
life is represented by the character Birdie and
her attachment to Lionnet, her family‘s
plantation, which she idealizes in her
memory.
The Changing South:
The way of life
in the South was
changing: the
extremely rich
white plantation
owners saw many
threats to their way
of life: their land
A classic Southern Plantation
ravaged by the war,
their laborers freed from them, and the
economic base of the South began moving away
from agriculture.
Henry W. Grady
created the Atlantic
Constitution, a
publication where he
called for a ―New
South‖ – a South built
on industrialization
A mill on former farming land
(no longer solely on
agriculture) with closer ties to businesses based
in the North. Richard H. Edmonds was a leader
of the ―farm to factory‖ movement. He wanted
to encourage Northern businesses to invest in
the South‘s economy by joining with
Southerners to build mills. This way, the cotton
could be processed where it was harvested
instead of being shipped all the way North. The
number of mills in the South grew from 160 to
400 from 1880 to 1900 (the year The Little Foxes
is set.) The Little Foxes begins with the Hubbard
family discussing a business deal with Mr.
Marshall from Chicago about building a mill,
which would take advantage of the cheap labor
in the South—namely freed slaves and poor
whites.
Many
African-Americans
of
the
Reconstruction age in the South, as
numerous generations before them, dreamt
of escaping to the North. They believed the
North to be a place of freedom and
opportunity. Many of the Southern AfricanAmericans did travel North, most notably in
the 1920s during the Great Migration. The
search for equal opportunity, both for those
African-Americans who journeyed North
and those who stayed South, continued
throughout the twentieth century and led to
the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and
60s.
Share-croppers in a field in the South at the
turn of the Twentieth Century
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Erwin Mills near Durham, NC
―There
are people who eat the earth and eat all the
people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then, there
are people who stand around and watch them eat it.‖
--- Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes
Details about Locusts:
This is a quotation from The Little Foxes.
Addie, an African-American servant in the
household, makes this comment about the
family she serves. She thinks the Hubbards are
like locusts who eat the earth. The locusts she
refers to come from the Bible passage Exodus
10:15:
―For they covered the face of the
whole earth, so that the land was
darkened; and they did eat every
herb of the land, and all the fruit of
the trees which the hail had left; and
there remained not any green thing
in the trees, or in the herbs of the
field, through all the land of Egypt.‖
A swarm can stretch up to 460 square miles
and pack between 40 and 80 million individual
locus. Each insect can eat its weight in plants
each day, so a swarm that size would eat 423
million pounds in one day.
The locusts swarms are typically always in
motion and can cover great distances; once a
swarm flew from West Africa across the
Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean.
They exist all over the world but currently
cause the most devastation in Africa. Locusts
can affect the economic livelihood, not to
mention cause famine and starvation, of nearly
one-tenth of the world‘s human population.
They are considered an omen of evil and
destruction.
Prompt:
Why would a playwright ever compare
human characters to ―an omen of evil and
destruction‖? What are we doing in our
world right now that could be considered
―locust-like,‖ swarming and destroying?
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Referring to the second half of Hellman‘s
quotation, who are the people in our world
right now who are just standing around
―watching‖ the devouring of society? What
things in our world are currently being
devoured?
Ivo van Hove
Ivo van Hove is the director of The Little Foxes
here at New York Theatre Workshop. He is a
Finnish-born director who has worked
extensively in Europe and the United States in
theater and opera, usually incorporating video
projection and other forms of mixed media. Ivo
has collaborated with New York Theatre
Workshop five times before: More Stately
Mansions by Eugene O‘Neill (1997), A Streetcar
Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (1999),
Alice in Bed by Susan Sontag (2000), Hedda
Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (2004), and The
Misanthrope by Molière (2008). We are thrilled
to welcome him back for what will be a bold and
daring production of a classic American play.
Ivo‘s work has been referred to as ―iconoclastic.‖
An iconoclast is anyone who breaks established
dogma or conventions. Ivo does not stage
standard or typical productions of famous plays.
Instead he creates new worlds for the play and
its characters in order to resonate with modern
audiences and the contemporary world they live
in.
Ivo is always inspired by two things: 1. the script
itself and 2. the world he lives in. His theater
uses works from the past in order to tell us
something about the present.
WHAT IVO SAYS about
THE LITTLE FOXES:
―This family is isolated, frozen in time, like animals running out of
food, chewing each other up. They inhabit a once civilized,
aristocratic world in decay, where people do not know how to
escape. They become bitter, frustrated, cannibalistic. They are like
foxes that ruin the fruitful vines because they are too greedy.
Foxes that have to be caught because they destroy the
future. Greed is the problem, the fate hanging over this family.
…But most of all, think of the fatal hubris of these characters who
think they can control their lives.‖
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Prompt: Ivo van Hove usually sets his productions in contemporary times, even if the
script was written long ago and set in a different time. Compare and contrast the
production photos below. Would you ever guess the script is exactly the same based on
the photos? What do you think The Little Foxes might look like?
Period Productions
Ivo van Hove‘s Productions at NYTW
The Misanthrope
by Molière was written in France in 1666.
Dallas Theater Center, 2008.
Photo: William Deshazer/DMN.
Bill Camp, Jeanine Serralles, NYTW, 2007.
Photo: Joan Marcus.
Hedda Gabler
by Henrik Ibsen was written in Norway in 1890.
Kate Burton and Harris Yulin
Williamstown Theatre Festival,
2000. Photo: Richard Feldman.
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John Douglas Thompson and Elizabeth Marvel,
NYTW, 2004. Photo: Joan Marcus.
When it first premiered in 1939, some reviews of The Little Foxes painted the
Hubbard family as villains. Lillian Hellman was distraught to find audiences
viewing these characters as villainous as that was not her intention at all.
―I never see characters as monstrously as
audiences do.‖ - Hellman
Ivo van Hove shares Hellman‘s view and wants his audience to see each character
as a real, whole human being with influences and motives and to be able to relate
to the characters. To that end, Ivo makes this production of The Little Foxes
contemporary and relevant. This production is going to look and sound very
different from most other productions.
The Little Foxes is set in Alabama in 1900. However, Lillian Hellman never
believed that this story of trickery, deceit, and greed was exclusive to these
characters or this time period. As the character Ben Hubbard, the oldest brother,
remarks:
―There are hundreds of Hubbards sitting in rooms like this throughout the
country. All their names aren‘t Hubbard, but they are all Hubbards and they will
own this country someday.‖
The play debuted in 1939, ten years after the nation plunged into the Great
Depression due to overspending and overinvestment. And now we are presenting
this play at a time of deep recession and serious economic troubles throughout the
world due to recklessness and greed. As Hellman points out and van Hove strives to
demonstrate, the themes of this play are, unfortunately, as timeless as human
nature.
Prompt:
What were the modern elements Ivo added in this production?
Why would Ivo have decided to not place the play in its historic setting, Alabama in 1900?
What did it add to your experience of the play?
Can you imagine what a historically set production of The Little Foxes might look and sound
like? How do you think your experience of the play would have changed if you saw that
production? Would you have been able to make the links to modern society?
What part of the show you just saw might have made you aware the script is set in 1900
Alabama and not modern day?
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What Others Say about Ivo:
―Van Hove has made his reputation with revivals that run 180 degrees away from your average, typical
interpretation of classic text.‖
Variety
―You do not feel, as you often do with deconstructionists, that Mr. van Hove is imposing unwarranted
meaning.‖
Ben Brantley, The New York Times, September 13, 1999
―You know when the astronauts first went to the moon, and then they returned, and they all went through
a period of deep depression and confusion after being in outer space? I always sort of experience that after
working with Ivo. I come back down to earth and go, ‗Oh they just want me to sit in a chair and talk at the
kitchen table. Oh.‘ The thing that is so thrilling about theater is it truly is a magic space where anything can
happen. Personally I don‘t want to do theater that‘s very stylish, when it‘s just stories on stage that are
basically the same as TV or film.‖
Elizabeth Marvel, The Gothamist, February 26, 2010
Sources and Further Reading:
Hellman, Lillian. Six Plays by Lillian Hellman. New York: Modern Library, 1960.
----------. An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1969.
----------. Pentimento. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1973.
----------. Scoundrel Time. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1976.
―Lillian Hellman, Playwright, Author and Rebel, Dies at 77,‖ New York Times, July 1, 1984.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0620.html
Del Signore, John. ―Elizabeth Marvel, Actor.‖ The Gothamist, February 26, 2010
http://gothamist.com/2010/02/26/elizabeth_marvel_actor.php
Isherwood, Charles. ―A Hedda for Self-Absorbed Modern Times.‖ New York Times, September 22, 2004.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/theater/reviews/22hedd.html
Piepenburg, Eric. ―Hey, Moliere, Hold Onto Your Hat!‖ New York Times, September 23, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/theater/23piep.html
Schultz, Stanley K. and Tishler, William P. ―Civil War to the Present: Lecture 2 The ―New South.‖ 1999.
http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture02.html
National Geographic. ―Red Fox.‖ Accessed August 24, 2010.
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/red-fox/
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