Daniel Kitson's MOUSE to Make American Premiere at St. Ann's Warehouse

St. Ann's Warehouse will welcome back the beloved British monologuist and comedIan Daniel Kitson for the American Premiere of his newest show, Mouse: The Persistence of an Unlikely Thought, November 9 - 27.

Kitson will perform Mouse: The Persistence of an Unlikely Thought November 9-12, 15-20, 22, 23, 25 and 26 at 7:30pm; and November 12, 13, 19, 20, 26 and 27 at 3pm. The production officially opens November 13 at 3pm. The new St. Ann's Warehouse is located at 45 Water Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn. All tickets are $25 and can be purchased at www.stannswarehouse.org, 718.254.8779 and 866.811.4111.

Mouse is about friendship and loneliness, doubt and hope, a mouse, a phone call and the unfathomable repercussions of everything we ever do.

Kitson describes the show's genesis this way: "A few years ago, quite suddenly, I thought of something. Something unlikely. An implausible story about a mouse. Since then, whenever starting a new show, faced with the empty page and the endless possibility and the looming deadline I have tried and failed to find a way of telling that particular story. Every structural gambit or presentational conceit feeling both oddly insufficient and insufficiently odd. And so, every time, eventually, I've abandoned the mouse and I've moved on. I've had a different idea, for a different story and I've written a different show. This time was no different, again I wanted to tell that story and again I didn't know how. And then, quite suddenly, I thought of something else. Something equally unlikely. An implausible story about a phone call. And here we are."

Of her decision to present Mouse, St. Ann's Warehouse Artistic Director Susan Feldman said, "There's no one like Daniel to challenge your brain and tug at your heart, leaving you both gutted and amazed when the story is told. There's nobody like this quirky, brilliant, lovable man."

A native of Denby Dale, in Yorkshire, Daniel Kitson is an award-winning writer and performer whose innovative "story shows" have become a consistent highlight of the Edinburgh Festival and, in recent years, St. Ann's Warehouse seasons. He is also an internationally celebrated stand-up comedian. Kitson has received six of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe's prestigious Fringe First Awards, and has won the Perrier Comedy Award, two Chortle Awards (Comedian's Comedian and Best Solo Show), The Stage Acting Award for Best Solo Show, The Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and The Argus Angel Award at the Brighton Festival. Mouse made its World Premiere in May 2016 at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre.

Mouse: The Persistence of an Unlikely Thought follows the immensely successful World Premiere of Taylor Mac's landmark A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which St. Ann's Warehouse presented with Pomegranate Arts September 15 - October 9. The St. Ann's Warehouse 2016-17 season will continue with another beloved solo performer, downtown New York icon Penny Arcade, in her Longing Lasts Longer, winner of Scotsman Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, December 1 - 11; the Donmar Warehouse production of The Tempest, culminating director Phyllida Lloyd's trilogy of all-female Shakespeare productions led by The accomplished Harriet Walter, January 13 - February 19, 2017; 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's book from Kneehigh and Emma Rice, the new Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe, March 16 - April 9, 2017; and Arlington, the celebrated new play written and directed by Enda Walsh, choreographed by Emma Martin, and produced by Landmark Productions and the Galway International Arts Festival, May 3-28, 2017.

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 a 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. The building complex includes a second space, a Studio, for St. Ann's Puppet Lab, smaller-scale events and community uses, as well as 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, to help 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 theater performances in the church sanctuary.

From Fall 2001 through the 2014-15 season, the organization activated found spaces 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 twelve years (2001-2012) in a warehouse that was located at 38 Water Street, St. Ann's transformed another 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 at 45 Water Street in Brooklyn Bridge Park into the new St. Ann's Warehouse.

The Inaugural Season, November 2015 - June 2016, featured signature international presentations that continually demonstrated the flexibility 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 circus company NoFitState, which St. Ann's presented in a flying-saucer shaped tent erected 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; 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 and Henry IV; 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, 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 of 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.

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