\'Mies Julie\' to Start New Season at St. Ann\'s Warehouse

September 18, 2012, 11:33 am

By PATRICK HEALY

The South African production “Mies Julie,” based on the Strindberg play and an award-winning hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last month, will have its American premiere this fall as the first production in St. Ann's Warehouse's temporary new home in Brooklyn, the theater's leaders said on Tuesday.

In announcing St. Ann's 2012-13 season, the theater's artistic director, Susan Feldman, said it would begin about a month later than usual â€" on Nov. 8, with the first performance of “Mies Julie” â€" because of time needed to retrofit the theater's new home at 29 Jay Street in Dumbo.

St. Ann's, a widely admired presenter of international and experimental theater, moved there this summer af ter its longtime nearby home was slated for commercial development. Ms. Feldman said construction is well underway on the Jay Street facility, a 16,000-square-feet warehouse. Bathrooms, offices and an entry ramp have been constructed, while the open-plan theater space is weeks from being finished and painted.

“We'd hoped to be ready in time for the Dumbo Arts Festival in late September,” she said, “but there is just more to do.”

St. Ann's has signed a three-year lease for the Jay Street space, and eventually hopes to create a theater in the old Tobacco Warehouse in Dumbo now that a years-long legal battle over its use and parkland status appears to be over.

The theater's 2012-13 season announcement includes seven productions, two fewer than last season. Ms. Feldman said she had not intended to have a slimmer schedule â€" “I program the work I love most” â€" and noted that some concerts would probably be added to the schedule.

“Mies Julie,” written and directed by Yael Farber (“MoLoRa”) and set in post-apartheid South Africa, will run Nov. 8-Dec. 2. It will be followed by director Dmitry Krymov's production “Opus No. 7” from the Moscow School of Dramatic Art, which uses actors, musicians, acrobats, and puppets to render stories of people facing persecution. It will run Jan. 9-19, 2013. Cynthia Hopkins's new show “This Clement World,” a meditation on global climate change that incorporates a 15-piece band, will run Feb. 5-17.

A new production by Emma Rice and Kneehigh Theater (“Brief Encounter”), “The Wild Bride,” based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale about a father who accidentally sells his daughter to the devil, will run Feb. 23-March 17. It will be followed with “Mayday Mayday,” a solo show by the leading man in Kneehigh's “Brief Encounter,” Tristan Sturrock, describing his recovery from breaking his neck in 2004 during May Day festivities. It will run April 16-May 5.

A site-specific work, “Roadkill,” conceived and directed by Cora Bissett, will involve 25 audience members traveling by bus with two women to an apartment in Brooklyn where they encounter scenes of human trafficking. The piece will run June 4-30. The final theater event of St. Ann's season, a toy theater festival, will take place June 14-23.