St. Ann's Warehouse Cuts Ribbon on New Theater and Season

The Brooklyn-based St. Ann's Warehouse has officially cut the ribbon on its new home, the $31.6 million, 25,000-square-foot theater at the site of the pre-Civil War Tobacco Warehouse (located at 45 Water St.) under the Brooklyn Bridge. The organization will present its first season at the venue this year.

According to press notes, the new theater "represents the triumph of attaining a permanent home for the organization that, since 1980, has activated multiple found spaces for cultural use in downtown Brooklyn. Founded to stimulate the adaptive reuse of the landmark Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity, and subsequently two warehouses in the burgeoning neighborhood of DUMBO since 2001, St. Ann’s has become a compelling destination for live performance worldwide. St. Ann’s Warehouse now stands poised to bring theater to Brooklyn Bridge Park."

The season opens with the New York premiere of Phyllida Lloyd's all-female Henry IV, which originally played at London's Donmar Warehouse. A follow-up to Lloyd's all-female Julius Caesar, which ran at St. Ann's in 2013, Shakespeare's history play will run from November 6-December 6. Dame Harriet Walter, a Tony nominee for Broadway's Mary Stuart, reprises her performance as King Henry, with additional casting to be announced.

Kicking off 2016, from January 8-17, is the American premiere of the new opera The Last Hotel, written by Donnacha Dennehy and Tony winner Enda Walsh. A look at assisted suicide and the marketplace, it is presented in association with the PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival and the Irish Arts Center. Also in January is Labapalooza!, a mini-festival of new puppet theater from artists in the Lab.

Three-time Tony winner Mark Rylance (Twelfth Night) will return to New York from February 14-March 13 to star in the premiere of Nice Fish, his stage adaptation of the poems of American prose poet Louis Jenkins. Directed by Rylance's wife, composer Claire van Kampen, the work is cowritten with Jenkins, the man behind two of Rylance's famous Tony acceptance speeches.

The acclaimed Young Vic Theatre/Joshua Andrews production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) as Blanche and Ben Foster (Orphans) as Stanley, will come to St. Ann's from April 23-May 22. The drama, directed by Benedict Andrews, is presented in association with Bruno Wang productions.

The North American premiere of Bianco — a production of NoFit State Circus, which plays its own spaceship tent in Brooklyn Bridge Park — will run from May 3-29 under the direction of Firenza Guidi.

Additional information and casting for all of these productions will be announced in the coming months.

For tickets to and information about this season's St. Ann's Warehouse productions, click here.