Lena Hall to Celebrate the Power of Art at St. Ann's Warehouse Gala

St. Ann's Warehouse has announced its 2017 gala, which will feature a special concert, created for the occasion, by Tony Award-winner and GRAMMY Award-nominee Lena Hall (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage), Monday, June 5, at the "stunning" (New York Magazine) waterfront theater in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The event honors Brooklyn pioneers Buzzy O'Keeffe and Steve Hindy, the founder-proprietors of The River Café and Brooklyn Brewery, respectively, who set the bar-literally-on vision, fortitude and excellence.

The evening will begin at 6:15pm with cocktails on the waterfront and in the Max Family Garden, followed at 7:45pm with the concert and a family-style dinner in the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Theater. Tickets begin at $1,000 and can be purchased by emailing Patrick@stannswarehouse.org or calling 718.834.8794 x 114. St. Ann's Warehouse is located at 45 Water Street in in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Lena Hall's performance will celebrate the power of art in turbulent times, with music by Janis Joplin, Radiohead, Talking Heads and more. The concert is a singular opportunity to experience the rare combination of grit and beauty that characterizes Hall's singing. A Tony Award-winner for her critically acclaimed performance as Yitzhak in the hit 2014 Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hall is currently starring, to rave reviews, in Sarah Ruhl's How to Transcend a Happy Marriage at Lincoln Center Theater. She recently portrayed both roles of Hedwig and Yitzhak in Hedwig and the Angry Inch in Los Angeles (LA Drama Critics Circle nomination) and San Francisco, and toured the U.S. and Canada as part of Josh Groban's "Stages" tour. She also starred as Nicola in Tony Award-winning musical Kinky Boots, and has appeared on HBO's "Girls" and Amazon Prime's "Good Girls Revolt," among other TV shows and films. Her solo album Sin & Salvation: Live at the Carlyle is available on iTunes.

Michael "Buzzy" O'Keeffe set out to build a restaurant on the waterfront that would combine three of his avocations: building, food and being by the water. In 1977, after twelve years of lengthy negotiations with the City of New York, he succeeded with his outstanding barge restaurant, The River Café, the first establishment to make DUMBO a destination. From the beginning, O'Keeffe has insisted that The River Café source only the finest ingredients available, setting the bar for culinary excellence on the East Coast and far beyond. The Brooklyn landmark celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.

Steve Hindy began brewing beer in his Park Slope home after leaving his post as a Middle East Correspondent for The Associated Press. After founding Brooklyn Brewery in 1987, Hindy eschewed traditional marketing and instead donated beer to arts, music and community organizations throughout the city. As a result, Williamsburg flourished around him, and today Brooklyn Brewery thrives, spreading the beer and the brand all over the world as a beacon of Brooklyn's renaissance.

St. Ann's Warehouse plays a vital role on the global cultural landscape as an American artistic home for international companies of distinction, American avant-garde masters and talented emerging artists ready to work on a grand scale. St. Ann's signature flexible, open space allows artists to stretch, both literally and imaginatively, enabling them to approach work with unfettered creativity, knowing that the theater can be adapted in multiple configurations to suit their needs.

In the heart of Brooklyn Bridge Park, St. Ann's Warehouse has designed an award-winning, spectacular waterfront theater that opened in October 2015. The new theater offers St. Ann's signature versatility and grandeur on an amplified scale while respecting the walls of an original 1860's Tobacco Warehouse. In addition to the flexible Steinberg Theater, the building complex includes a second space, a Studio, for St. Ann's Puppet Lab, smaller-scale events and community uses, and The Max Family Garden, designed by landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and open to Brooklyn Bridge Park visitors during Park hours.

Susan Feldman founded Arts at St. Ann's (now St. Ann's Warehouse) in 1980 as part of the New York Landmarks Conservancy's campaign to save the National Historic Landmark Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights. For twenty-one years, St. Ann's presented a decidedly eclectic array of concert and theatrical performances in the church sanctuary.

From Fall 2001 through the 2014-15 season, the organization activated found warehouses in DUMBO with the world's most imaginative theater- and music-makers, helping to make the burgeoning neighborhood a destination for New Yorkers and tourists alike. After 12 years (2001-2012) at 38 Water Street, St. Ann's transformed a second raw space at 29 Jay Street, turning it into an interim home for three years (2012-2015) while the organization adapted the then-roofless Tobacco Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park into the new St. Ann's Warehouse.

The Inaugural Season, October 2015 - June 2016, featured signature international presentations that dramatically demonstrated the flexibility and power of the new St. Ann's Warehouse. The season began with the Donmar Warehouse all-female Henry IV, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring Harriet Walter, and continued with The Last Hotel, a new opera from Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh; Nice Fish, written by Mark Rylance and prose poet Louis Jenkins after Jenkins' prose poems, and performed by a cast led by Rylance; the Young Vic's immensely acclaimed production of A Streetcar Named Desire,directed by Benedict Andrews, with an explosive cast led by Gillian Anderson, Ben Foster, Vanessa Kirby and Corey Johnson; and Bianco, from the Cardiff-based international contemporary NoFitState circus, which St. Ann's presented in a flying-saucer shaped tent under the Brooklyn Bridge in May 2016.

Almost four 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 with Mark Rylance; Druid Company's The Walworth Farce, The New Electric Ballroom and Penelope by Enda Walsh and Walsh's Misterman, featuring Cillian Murphy; Lou Reed's Berlin; the National Theater of Scotland's Black Watch and Let the Right One In, both directed by John Tiffany and Stephen Hoggett; Kneehigh Theatre's Brief Encounter, Tristan & Yseult and 946; Yael Farber's Mies Julie; Dmitry Krymov Lab's Opus No. 7; the Donmar Warehouse all-female Julius Caesar, Henry IV and The Tempest; Kate Tempest's American Debut with Brand New Ancients; Tricycle Theatre's Red Velvet and, most recently, the 24-hour marathon performance of Taylor Mac's 24 Decade History of Popular Music. St. Ann's has championed such artists as The Wooster Group, Mabou Mines, Jeff Buckley, Cynthia Hopkins, Emma Rice and Daniel Kitson, and presented an historic David Bowie concert in 2002.

The new St. Ann's Warehouse retains the best of its past homes: the sense of sacred space from the organization's original home in the Church, and the vastness and endless capacity for reconfiguration artists have harnessed in St. Ann's temporary warehouses in DUMBO.

For more information, visit www.stannswarehouse.org.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride