Located in DUMBO, Brooklyn, St. Ann's will launch its season Oct. 4 with The Music of Fela Kuti, a free concert featuring Tony nominee Sahr Ngaujah and the cast of Broadway's Fela!, which will take place at Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 1.
Having previously presented the premieres of Enda Walsh's The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, St. Ann's will welcome back the Druid Theatre Company with the American premiere of Walsh's latest play, Penelope, running Oct. 23-Nov. 14. An absurdist play based on Homer's "Odyssey," press notes for Penelope read: "It's 11:30am and already it’s 92 degrees. At the bottom of a drained swimming pool, four ridiculous men face their inevitable deaths, and play for an unwinnable love."
The Kneehigh Theatre, which debuted its heralded Brief Encounter at St. Ann's prior to its current Broadway engagement, will return to Brooklyn with The Red Shoes Nov. 19-Dec. 12. Emma Rice directs the work based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale about "a girl who cannot resist her red shoes; they make her dance with delight, spin with possibilities. But what happens when temptation becomes obsession? When she can’t stop dancing? When she can’t take them off? Surreal and sensuous, quirky and profound, bloody and bare – Kneehigh has created a fun and menacing cabaret -- with muscular dancing, characteristic hi-jinks, and haunting overtones."
After a praised debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2009, British stand-up comedian Daniel Kitson will offer The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church Jan. 6-30, 2011. According to St. Ann's, "Gregory had fifty seven letters to write. He’d never written that many letters, not in one go. In fact, he’d never written a single letter and it was taking significantly longer than he’d anticipated. He’d started, full of optimism, curiously enough, at 9 am and now here he was 8 hours later half way through letter twenty four. He glanced at his watch and then at the noose hanging over his head. Gregory sighed. Had he known how long suicide letters take, he thought, he wouldn’t have cancelled the milk for the morning."
Steve Cuiffo will conjure late comedian Lenny Bruce in Lenny Bruce at "Carnegie Hall" 50 Years to the Night Feb. 4, 2011. Here's how St. Ann's describes the work: "On February 4, 1961, New York was deep in a state of declared emergency: 2 feet of snow on the ground and still falling; winds of 80 mph. The brilliant young comedian Lenny Bruce had a hugely important midnight show scheduled at Carnegie Hall and had been sweating his way north from Miami for two days. Would anyone show up? In sub-zero temperatures, with an official ban on driving? Indeed they would, two thousand strong, arriving by slow-moving bus and subway and their own two feet. What they saw was arguably Lenny’s greatest performance, an adrenaline-fueled be-bop beyond worthy of the dogged efforts his audience had made to be there…" St. Ann's will also present the commission of Tell the Way, penned by contemporary composer Nico Muhly for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Feb. 10-12, 2011. In addition to the chorus, the collaborative work will feature Muhly, guitarist Bryce Dessner, sitarist Bishi and banjo/fiddle player Sam Amidon. "Loosely based on medieval and colonial English travel narratives, the work draws from American folk sources, prayers for the Royal Navy, early colonial diaries, Mandeville, Herodotus and Marco Polo," according to St. Ann's.
The final production will be the anticipated arrival of the National Theatre of Scotland's Beautiful Burnout Feb. 25-March 27, 2011. After premiering the play at the Edinburgh Fringe this past summer, NTS returns to St. Ann's where the sold-out run of Black Watch made its extended U.S. debut. Tony-nominated playwright Byrony Lavery (Frozen) penned the play that is directed and choreographed by Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett (Black Watch, American Idiot) and features the music of Underworld. The Glasgow-set play, according to St. Ann's, "is about the soul sapping three-minute rounds that determine which young men become gods and which gods become mortal… [and was] instigated by Hoggett’s observations of young boxers in training at Brooklyn’s famous Gleason’s Gym, where he became intrigued with both the beauty and brutality in the movement and distress of the live boxers. It resonated with the authentic drilling and soldiering he explored so brilliantly as choreographer of Black Watch, coupled with similar issues among working class youth seeking transcendent ways to escape, in this case, through amateur fighting."
Tickets go on sale to the general public Sept. 21. Phone (718) 254-8779 or visit artsatstanns.org.
St. Ann's Warehouse is located at 38 Water Street (between Main and Dock St.) in Brooklyn, New York.
