An artist’s impression of how the new St Ann’s Warehouse venue will look after its October opening

When the latest incarnation of St Ann’s Warehouse opens in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge in New York, a theatre that already has a reputation of staging cutting edge UK plays will be in prime position to attract new audiences. Howard Sherman meets its leading lights

There has long been a reciprocity between Broadway and the West End, dating back perhaps a century, with shows and artists travelling back and forth with regularity and acclaim.

For a steady diet of many of the UK’s most acclaimed companies and artists, New Yorkers can turn not only to Times Square but also to an area of Brooklyn called Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). This is where St Ann’s Warehouse has been a leader not only in presenting provocative, inventive and often thrilling work from the UK, as well as from across Europe, South Africa and Asia, but also at the forefront of the reclamation of an industrial neighbourhood as a community asset.

A wide variety of UK work has played at St Ann’s in recent years, including Kneehigh’s Brief Encounter, The Red Shoes, The Wild Bride and Tristan and Yseult, the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch, several pieces by Daniel Kitson and now Let the Right One In.

Founded by Susan Feldman as Arts at St Ann’s in 1980, the company began with a dual purpose: establishing a creative centre for its Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood while also working to rehabilitate and preserve the historic church building that served as its home. In those days, the company was focused on shortrun concerts and musical events, but its move into the rough and tumble Dumbo neighbourhood in 2001 brought very different opportunities and challenges. From October, it begins work in its fourth venue when it moves into the former Tobacco Warehouse, a short distance from its current interim space, which has been in use since 2012.

Susan Feldman and Andrew Hamingson (Photo by Howard Sherman)

Recalling the early years at the church, Feldman explains how it “lent itself to music and fantastic spectacle”. But, in a move to a Water Street warehouse that was supposed to provide a home for only nine months but lasted for 12 years, theatre moved to the forefront of the programming, somewhat unexpectedly.

“We didn’t build a theatre,” Feldman says. “We used what was there, which was a very interesting grid, plus it had heat, electricity and an alarm system. We just built these temporary structures, so we could be flexible and move the space around. We kept that as we moved from place to place, so that temporary vibe and state of being became permanent.”

With the new building, the company’s executive director, Andrew Hamingson, speaks about only two “revolutionary” changes in store: “For the first time in St Ann’s history, there will be air conditioning, which means we can programme year-round if we want to. The second is a permanent dressing room.”

Hamingson also cites the opportunity for the offices and the theatre to be all under one roof and the increased potential of reaching out to even broader audiences, because the new venue is in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which he says draws 120,000 people each weekend.

While Feldman says St Ann’s audiences have been pretty much split between Manhattan and Brooklyn residents, she and Hamingson say the balance is shifting towards the continually gentrifying Brooklyn. Hamingson notes that they do not have the kind of tourist audience that one finds in Manhattan, but there is a serious international audience that makes its way to Brooklyn. Feldman attributes that to greater awareness of the neighbourhood itself – and to the success of Black Watch in its first of three visits, in 2007, which she calls a “crucial turning point”.

National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch

“Black Watch was a very special case,” she says. “There was a big New York Times story about how audiences didn’t want to talk about the war in Afghanistan. Then we did Black Watch and we found people absolutely did want to know about the war. The emotional responses of the audience and the press were so huge that it was more than just a cultural phenomenon. There was a need to wrap your arms around people and that’s what this play was doing and inviting.”

NTS’s executive producer Neil Murray says the show’s run at St Ann’s was significant for NTS as well. “The original run of Black Watch at St Ann’s and Ben Brantley’s New York Times review have been a huge driver not just for that show, but the company’s success in the US. While we have subsequently brought something like another seven shows to the US, including the 2015 runs of Let the Right One In and Dunsinane, that initial Black Watch run was a big springboard.”

The process of bringing a foreign show to the US puts St Ann’s in the position of being a presenter, but also a producing partner. “You can take a show from Europe and it really has to adapt to come over, it has to adapt to come into our space,” says Feldman.

Citing shows like Brief Encounter and Misterman, she speaks of having to shrink the productions. “Recapitalisation has to happen, so that becomes very much like producing. We have to raise money together to close the gap between the presentation costs and the box office. There’s always a period of risk assessment that we go through because we don’t have a single budget every year. We have to develop funding that’s going to go for each project and we put that together the way a producer would for every single presentation.”

St Ann’s does not typically participate financially in the future lives of productions it brings to the US, only doing so in cases where it has commissioned and plans to premiere the work.

Tristan Sturrock in Kneehigh’s Brief Encounter

Kneehigh’s executive producer Paul Crewe says he enjoys Feldman’s risk taking approach, and describes the connection between the companies as one that is “based on the work and a mutual respect”. He adds: “For Kneehigh, St Ann’s was a shop window into the US, because other programmers would often see the work. St Ann’s is one of the reasons we have had opportunities to play other cities and venues in America.”

As for how she finds work, Feldman says she visits three or four festivals each summer and makes trips to London regularly. She says that she also gets recommendations from others in the field.

Hamingson and Feldman say that bringing international work to the US has got harder. There used to be a lot more government funding for cultural exchanges, says Hamingson, adding: “Those pools, because of the downturn, have closed up a bit, so we’ve had to find other partners to take smaller pieces and do more of the fundraising on our own.”

“In fact, we are concerned,” says Feldman, “because there’s a lot of talk in Europe about how they’re going to follow the US model. When they say things like that they mean they’re going to start with philanthropy, but what they’re missing, the one reason that so many people go to Europe to see work is because of the core support that European companies get in their towns and in their cities.

“That support sustains the development of work on a regular basis. If it goes away, because they want to go on the US model, there is going to be an even worse drying up of original work. To me, it’s not a great sign. On the other hand, for European companies to be able to make use of philanthropy, and the desire of patrons to support, is a good thing for sure.”

As for the distinction between Brooklyn and Manhattan, neither Crewe nor Murray place much emphasis on it back home. “People in the UK are certainly aware of St Ann’s particular kind of programming,” says Murray. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that companies we really admire, like Kneehigh and Druid, are also frequent visitors there. I’m not sure a Scottish audience makes that distinction between Manhattan and Brooklyn, but in deference to Susan Feldman, we are always very careful to differentiate.”

“We have had, and continue to have, an interest in Manhattan,” says Crewe. “But the fact that St Ann’s is slightly outside the Broadway and Off-Broadway aesthetic gives us a sense of being part of a maverick world – an outsider that is a little rebellious. This fits well with us.” St Ann’s move into the new Tobacco Warehouse facility this year will be followed by the openings of several new performing arts venues, including the Ground Zero Arts Center, the Culture Shed, and Pier55. So is Feldman concerned about market saturation? Not really: “You know, the more culture there is, the more culture there is.

“What’s really going to determine what goes into those buildings as well as what goes into our building is going to be the financial relationships of whatever’s going in there. They’re not going to be the Metropolitan Opera suddenly that’s got an unlimited budget to make art. Five spaces the size of St Ann’s, which is what the Shed is supposed to be? I don’t know. But they’re talking about Fashion Week, they’re not talking about Mark Rylance and Measure for Measure. Some people say we’re all competing for the same money and it’s going to be a very competitive. I don’t think we’ve ever competed on that level, so I’m not sure. We’ve always been a niche.”

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5 things you need to know about St Ann’s

* Founded 1980 in a historic landmark church by the New York Landmarks Conservancy to provide a complementary public use for the building and to preserve the first stained glass windows made in America.

* It has never had a permanent home. This will only come with the opening at the Tobacco Warehouse in October 2015.

* St Ann’s Warehouse has been the New York base and often national launching point for multiple theatre pieces by the National Theatre

of Scotland (Black Watch and Let the Right One In); Enda Walsh (four productions including Misterman); Kneehigh (four productions including Brief Encounter and The Wild Bride; and Daniel Kitson (including the world premiere of Analog.ue), among others.

* St Ann’s activated the first warehouse at 38 Water Street in DUMBO in November 2001, one month after 9/11, with a sold-out concert hosted by Martin Scorsese.

* American rockers who have also found an artistic home at St Ann’s include Lou Reed and Jeff Buckley.

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This article reflects British spelling and the copyediting style of The Stage, where it first appeared.

Hilda Cronje (left) and Bongile Mantsai in ‘Mies Julie’ at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

“Is that fog or haze?”

St. Ann’s Warehouse artistic director Susan Feldman asked that question to set and lighting designer Patrick Curtis, less than 72 hours before the first performance in the company’s new venue at 29 Jay Street in Brooklyn. It seemed like a mundane question with a major deadline approaching, but it was evidence of how smoothly everything was going elsewhere.

Her smoke-based question pertained to a special effect for the space’s opening production, “Mies Julie.” A South African adaptation and expansion of August Strindberg’s sexually charged “Miss Julie,” the play is reset from 19th century Sweden to present day in the barren karoo, where the restless daughter of an oppressive Boer farmer escalates the sexual attraction between her and an African worker.

Originally mounted by the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town, “Mies Julie” was a hit at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, prompting a quick decision by Feldman to inaugurate the new St. Ann’s space with the production. It opens tonight and will run through Dec. 2.

“It’s very bold, very sexy,” Feldman said. “It captured a sense of South Africa in a way we don’t know in America, and it’s not taken from one point of view or another. Within two weeks of seeing it, we booked it.”

While that may have accelerated the timetable for opening – St. Ann’s had originally planned a “soft opening” with a few concerts, followed by a full launch with “Opus No. 7″ from Russia in January – Feldman thought it would be worth it. “I didn’t want to end this conversation about ‘Mies Julie’ and start again in May.”

As of last Tuesday, there was wet paint in ample evidence in public areas and stencils awaiting paint for signage, even as the “Mies Julie” team was running a dry tech and awaiting the arrival of the actors for the first time (the show had been touring, and so it required minimal rehearsal in Brooklyn). Fortunately, although they had been under an evacuation order from Hurricane Sandy, the new venue was left untouched, requiring only minimal compression of production time on the show.

The 29 Jay Street venue is officially a three-year interim space for St. Ann’s while it works to secure and develop Brooklyn’s old Tobacco Warehouse near its former 38 Water Street home.

“When I went into the church [where the company was founded],” Feldman said, “I had no idea that it would be for 21 years. Water Street was a temporary space for 12 years. We know there’s a future beyond three years, assuming conversion works in the Tobacco Warehouse. But we have made our new theater to work just as our last theater functioned.”

Indeed, the two venues are similar, and similarly flexible. While the stage and seating for “Mies Julie” echoes that used for Daniel Kitson’s recent show, the layout for “Opus No. 7″ will resemble the expansive playing area of “Black Watch.”

“When we packed up Water Street, we realized that we’d only built one and a half walls there. It helped me not to feel tremendous loss,” Feldman said.

The new venue required steel work in order to hang a lighting grid, curtains and support future scenery, a new set of exit stairs and the rehanging of heating units. Unlike more polished arts complexes, the work on Jay Street was economical. “The fit out here took between $900,000 and $1 million,” said Feldman, adding that was exclusive of rent. It did result in some adjustment, such as a merging of the box office and production office into a single space, or, in Feldman’s compression, “the prox office.”

Despite producing in an untested space, the adapter and director of “Mies Julie,” Yael Farber, said that she wasn’t subjected to restrictions, comparing the space to a “widening aperture.” “The conversation was always ‘how does the space accommodate the work’,” said Farber, upon arrival for the first time at St. Ann’s. “Not ‘how does the work accommodate the space’.”

The move is only a few blocks from St. Ann’s previous space at 38 Water Street, and its potential future space at the Tobacco Warehouse. While there is the potential for audiences to feel a sense of dislocation, Feldman said that’s not the case, given the very public wrangling over the company’s search for a new home, necessitated by new development of the Water Street site.

“There was a lot of drama over the Tobacco Warehouse, so when we told our audiences [about 29 Jay Street], there was great relief and joy, especially from this side of DUMBO,” she said.

As mirrors and strip lights were being installed in makeshift dressing rooms (flexible dressing spaces being standard for all St. Ann’s productions) on Jay Street, the company’s executive director Andrew D. Hamingson said they had already begun the design process for their next home at Tobacco Warehouse, pending full approval of the site.

“The conversion process begins this month, and will take from six to nine months,” he said. “We are the designee for the land, which will be converted from parkland to land for private use, within Brooklyn Bridge Park. Then we can go forward with the lease. We expect the process to be favorable.”

This follows what was originally expected to be a more direct move to the Tobacco Warehouse, with the company operating on an itinerant basis for perhaps a year, that was scuttled when park regulatory issues came to light.

But perpetual change, show by show, and now perhaps theater by theater, seems to be the standard for St. Ann’s Warehouse. Describing the past few months, Feldman said, “We went from ‘Festen,’ to our Puppet Lab, to moving out, directly into our build here. It’s been an intensive six months for the staff and crew.”

From the perspective of an audience member attending only the second performance, on Friday evening, the transition was seamless, right down to the signs greeting patrons with the warning, “Theatrical haze and fog effects will be used in this production.”

See the article at the Wall Street Journal here.