Donmar's All-Female HENRY IV Opens Tonight at St. Ann's Warehouse's New Home

St. Ann's Warehouse, which for 36 years has enlivened New Yorkers with new works by the world's most vital music- and theater-makers, just opened its first permanent home, a 25,000-sf theater at the breathtaking site of the Tobacco Warehouse, on the waterfront in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The St. Ann's Warehouse 2015-16 Inaugural Season begins with the Donmar Warehouse's celebrated production of HENRY IV, opening tonight, November 11, and running through December 6, the second with St. Ann's in director Phyllida Lloyd's trilogy of all-female Shakespeares, set against the backdrop of women in prison. Like the first production in the series, JULIUS CAESAR, whose American Premiere was a major hit of St. Ann's 2013-14 season, Lloyd's "fresh, bracingly persuasive staging" (The Independent) of HENRY IV is led by the great Harriet Walter. St. Ann's will again present the Donmar's exceptional educational programs to New York City public school students and at risk youth.

Envisioning a trilogy empowering women to play Shakespearean roles normally reserved for men, Lloyd has now set a second Shakespeare play with an all-female cast against the backdrop of women incarcerated and at risk. In Henry IV, Dame Harriet Walter, deemed "one of the best Shakespeareans alive" by The Guardian, once again leads a diverse and exciting cast. London's Evening Standard has called this production "bracingly inventive," and The Financial Times has described it as "urgent, mischievous, subtly layered, and revelatory."

This major event, accompanied by an in-depth program of outreach and engagement projects, has ignited a cultural and social conversation about gender, equality and aspiration on both sides of the Atlantic.

For over three decades, St. Ann's has commissioned, produced and presented an eclectic body of innovative cultural presentations that meet at the intersection of theater and rock and roll. Since 2001, the organization has helped vitalize the emerging Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood, DUMBO, where St. Ann's Warehouse has become one of New York City's most important and compelling live performance destinations. After twelve years at 38 Water Street, St. Ann's activated a new warehouse at 29 Jay, turning it into an interim home while the organization has adapted the historic Tobacco Warehouse (45 Water Street) in Brooklyn Bridge Park into a waterfront cultural center. Construction is nearly finished.

Through its signature multi-artist concerts and groundbreaking music/theater collaborations, St. Ann's Warehouse has become the artistic home for the American avant-garde, international companies of stature and award-winning emerging artists. Three decades of consistently acclaimed landmark productions that found their American home at St. Ann's include Lou Reed's and John Cale's Songs for 'Drella; Marianne Faithfull's Seven Deadly Sins; Artistic Director Susan Feldman's Band in Berlin; Charlie Kaufman and the Coen Brothers' Theater of the New Ear; The Royal Court and TR Warszawa productions of Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis; The Globe Theatre of London's Measure for Measure; Druid Company's The Walworth Farce, The New Electric Ballroom and Penelope; Enda Walsh's Misterman, featuring Cillian Murphy; Lou Reed's Berlin; the National Theater of Scotland's acclaimed Black Watch; Kneehigh Theatre's Brief Encounter and Tristan & Yseult; Yael Farber's Mies Julie; Dmitry Krymov Lab's Opus No. 7; the Donmar Warehouse all-female Julius Caesar; Kate Tempest's Brand New Ancients; Tricycle Theatre's Red Velvet and, most recently, the National Theatre of Scotland's Let the Right One In. St. Ann's has championed such artists as The Wooster Group, Mabou Mines, Jeff Buckley, Cynthia Hopkins, Emma Rice and Daniel Kitson.

Early on in DUMBO, St. Ann's Warehouse was awarded the Ross Wetzsteon OBIE Award for the development of new work, for "inviting artists to treat their cavernous DUMBO space as both an inspiring laboratory and a sleek venue where its super-informed audience charges the atmosphere with hip vitality."