BROOKLYN: St. Ann’s Warehouse has announced its 2015–16, featuring a series of collaborations with world-renowned artists, including the Young Vic and Mark Rylance. It will be its inaugural season in the company’s new permanent home on the Brooklyn waterfront at the Tobacco Warehouse underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, which it has turned into a 25,000-square-foot cultural center after presenting two seasons in a temporary location on nearby Jay Street.
In a statement, founder and artistic director Susan Feldman said, “It was the journey of a lifetime to discover the serendipity and joy of theatricalizing the hallowed Church on Montague Street and two vast warehouses in DUMBO with some of the greatest companies and artists of at least two generations. It is quite another to attempt to create such a space from scratch, while respecting the revered walls of an iconic shell.” She praised the “skill and care” of St. Ann’s board and a team of architects, consultants, managers and artisans, as well as the “responsiveness of our city government and the massive support from our donors.”
The first season in the new building kicks off with the Donmar Warehouse production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, directed by Phyllida Lloyd (Nov. 6–Dec. 6). Like Donmar’s Julius Caesar, which played at St. Ann’s in 2013, the new production has an entirely female cast. St. Ann’s also will also host an in-depth program of outreach projects to ignite social conversation about gender equality.
Next on the bill is the Landmark Productions and Wide Open Opera production of The Last Hotel, a new opera by Donnacha Dennehy and Edna Walsh, running Jan. 8–17, 2016. This will mark the opera’s American premiere and the fourth Enda Walsh production brought to New York by St. Ann’s. The show is co-presented with PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now and Irish Arts Center.
The St. Ann’s Puppet Lab will next present LABAPALOOZA!, a festival of new works-in-progress by lab artists, Jan. 28–31, 2016. The weekend is supported by the Jim Henson Foundation.
Nice Fish is up next, running Feb. 14–March 13, 2016. The show was adapted by Mark Rylance from a book of poems of the same name by Louis Jenkins. Rylance is featured in the production, which directed by Claire van Kampen. Nice Fish was first produced at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 2013, and will also play at American Repertory Theater this fall.
St. Ann’s will next host the American premiere of the Young Vic production of A Streetcar Named Desire. The production is led by Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster as Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski, and will run Apr. 23–May 22, 2016.
To close the season, the NoFit State Circus will present Bianco (May 3–29, 2016. This production of the circus will be the first in North America. Directed by Firenza Guidi, Bianco is a large-scale circus blending acrobatics, live music, movement and imagery to create a world around standing audience members.
