St. Ann’s Warehouse fills a vital niche on the global cultural landscape as an artistic home for international companies of distinction, the American avant-garde, and talented emerging artists ready to work on a grand scale. By virtue of our eclectic programming profile, versatile performance space and collaborative producing ethos, St. Ann’s brings some of the world’s most imaginative theater to America’s shores. Over four decades, St. Ann’s has emerged as a key partner in the development of DUMBO and the Brooklyn waterfront, activating found spaces through preservation and adaptive re-use.
Arts at St. Ann’s began as a public use program to preserve the landmark Church of St Ann and the Holy Trinity, which became a hotbed for contemporary, classical, and multi-artist tribute concerts for hundreds of trailblazers like Lou Reed and John Cale, Marianne Faithfull, Rosanne Cash, Aaron Neville, and Jeff Buckley. In 2000, newly monikered St. Ann’s Warehouse resettled in DUMBO, where temporary warehouses were deployed to embrace revered international work. John Tiffany and Stephen Hoggett, Emma Rice and Kneehigh, TR Warszawa, Enda Walsh, Daniel Kitson, and Kate Tempest were among the many firsts introduced to American audiences. For The Wooster Group and Mabou Mines, it became a second home, and for the UK’s Donmar, Young Vic, and National Theatre, a breeding ground abroad.
In 2015, St. Ann’s established a permanent home in Brooklyn Bridge Park, respecting the walls of an original 1860’s Tobacco Warehouse with the spectacular Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Theater; a developmental Studio for community use; and The Max Family Garden, open to Park visitors. In 2018, Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! and Good Chance Theatre’s The Jungle changed the game once again, winning awards and notoriety, confronting global crises the likes of which we have not seen before. St. Ann’s Warehouse celebrates the future bolstered by the best of our itinerant past: a sense of sacred mission,