THE JUNGLE Comes To St. Ann's Warehouse For American Premiere
By: Stephi Wild Jun. 20, 2018
St. Ann's Warehouse will present the U.S. Premiere of The Jungle, the immensely acclaimed Good Chance Theatre co-production with the National Theatre and Young Vic. Currently opening a five-month run at London's Playhouse Theatre on the West End, The Jungle comes to St. Ann's beginning December 4, 2018.
The play is a vital remembrance of the now bulldozed camp in Calais, France known as the Jungle, where thousands of refugees who had escaped drought, war, and strife-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East waited for their "good chance" passage to Britain. With minimal resources in the squalid, sprawling landfill-turned-makeshift-camp, immigrants and committed volunteers built a warm, self-governing, diverse society-with restaurants, shops, a school, a church-from nothing.
The Jungle hails from writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson (who brought a geodesic dome tent they called the Good Chance Theatre to the camp) and is helmed by celebrated director Stephen Daldry (The Crown, The Hours, Billy Elliot) and Justin Martin. The productionhas been energizing an international conversation around immigration, borders, and the lived experiences of refugees ever since its momentous first performances exploded at the Young Vic Theatre last December. Tickets go on sale July 25.
Susan Feldman, St. Ann's Warehouse Artistic Director, says, "The Jungle blew me away. Coupled with Sarah Hickson's powerful photos of the original camp in its final days, the reality of what's happening to massive numbers of innocent people seeking shelter and safety comes bursting to life on stage. The authors have written an elegy to a place where despite enormous hardship and desperation, everyday people joined together to survive on their own creativity and interdependence. We cannot turn away from the negligence and dehumanization our government would like us to believe 'these people' somehow deserve."
Most media coverage of refugees tends to focus on unfolding humanitarian crises and the rabid responses to them among rising nationalist movements and governments; the individual stories of the fleeing men, women and children, like those living in the Calais Jungle, are rarely heard. As in the 2017 St. Ann's Warehouse exhibition Sounds Unseen: A Photographic Memoir of The Calais Sessions, in which photographer Sarah Hickson chronicled a collaborative project between musicians living in the UK and musicians living in the camp, The Jungle centers these personal stories and the events leading up to the camp's demolition by the French government in a sharp-eyed tribute to human resourcefulness and resilience against enormous odds.
In its U.S. premiere at St. Ann's Warehouse, The Jungle will make full use of the waterfront theater's extraordinary flexibility, inviting audiences into a ramshackle Afghani café, made of plywood tables, ill matching chairs and benches, and a rickety patchwork roof. Here, the everyday details of endless cycles of survival and threat, failed social contracts, creative thought and action, compassion and empathy, unfold.
In the Jungle, thick mud clogged the pathways between the flimsy tents; and hastily-built wooden shacks offered little protection from the European winter for its inhabitants-who reached over 10,000 in 2015. Yet stories from people who had endured long and dangerous journeys, who had lost their homes and most of their belongings, still exhibited great strength, friendship and hope. Along the Jungle's water-logged central road, there were places of worship, convenience stores, a library, and classrooms that offered respite from the harsh reality of daily life in the camp. A string of bustling cafes and restaurants run by refugees offered the comfort of home-cooked food, strong sweet tea and a place to gather with friends, to smoke, play cards, or watch music videos on TV. The play brings the audience inside its faithfully replicated restaurant with the hope that this short-term society will be remembered in all its complexity. The cast is made up of actors from around the world, many of whom come from refugee backgrounds including the Calais Jungle and now reside in the UK.
Reviewing the premiere at the Young Vic, Time Out said, "The Jungle makes a very strong case for the empathetic power of theatre. You come out understanding more but also feeling more. This is a story we need to hear again."
The Jungle marks the second partnership between St. Ann's Warehouse and the National Theatre, whose People, Places & Things St. Ann's Warehouse introduced to American audiences, winning vast acclaim and numerous accolades this season. Itmarks the second collaboration with the Young Vic, following the American premiere of the Young Vic's explosive production of A Streetcar Named Desire-directed by Benedict Andrews, and featuring Gillian Anderson, Ben Foster, Vanessa Kirby, and Corey Johnson-in 2016. This will be the first co-production with Good Chance Theatre, whose geodesic dome theater now resides on the streets of Paris, where Good Chance continues as a creative haven for refugees and displaced persons and a place of introduction and conversation for local Parisians and those newly arrived to the city.
In connection with The Jungle, St. Ann's Warehouse will offer its powerful youth engagement programs for NYC high school students, justice involved youth and immigrant community organizations, with workshops, performances and a series of talk backs informed by the play's themes:
Youth Engagement Programs: St. Ann's popular Youth Engagement Program for NYC high school students, immigrant and justice involved youth will be offered with specially designed empowerment workshops and performances.
Public Engagement: St. Ann's will offer subsidized tickets to refugee/immigrant organizations for their members to experience this bold new work. The production will be enhanced by a series of public discussions on issues related to the production and talk backs with artists in the production.
The Calais Sessions: St. Ann's will seek to evoke the spirit of a music project that brought together residents of the Jungle with British musicians in a makeshift sound studio, with performers in the cast and local musicians.
Sounds Unseen: Photographer Sarah Hickson documented the Jungle over two years, accompanying the UK musicians who brought music and instruments to the refugees to engage in the recording of The Calais Sessions. St. Ann's will present an exhibition of photos of the sessions and the last months of the refugee camp through to its destruction.
The world premiere of The Jungle at the Young Vic in December 2017 was a Young Vic and National Theatre co-production with Good Chance Theatre. The Jungle was originally commissioned by the National Theatre.
In London's West End, The Jungle is lead produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and Tom Kirdahy, Hunter Arnold.
The American Premiere of The Jungle is presented by St. Ann's Warehouse with major support from The Jean Stein Foundation, The Ford Foundation, SHS Foundation, The British Council, Jolie Schwartz, Jon and Nora Lee Sedmak, and Leyli Zohrenejad.
The National Theatre makes world-class theatre that is entertaining, challenging and inspiring - and makes it for everyone. In 2016-2017, the NT staged 26 productions and gave 2,585 performances at its home on London's South Bank. The NT's award-winning program had a UK paying audience of 1.8 million, 400,000 of which were NT Live audiences.
The work the National Theatre produces appeals to the widest possible audiences with new plays, musicals, re-imagined classics and new work for young audiences. The NT's work is seen in the West End, on tour throughout the UK and internationally, and in collaborations and co-productions with partners across the country. Through NT Live, the National Theatre broadcasts some of the best of British theatre to over 2,000 venues in 60 countries around the world.
Its extensive Learning program offers talks, events and workshops for people of all ages, and reaches nationwide through programs such as Connections, our annual festival of new plays for schools and youth theatres. In 2016-2017 there were 196,826 participations through the NT Learning events program. Over 3,000 schools have signed up to the free streaming service, On Demand in Schools, since its launch in September 2015.
One of the UK's leading theatres, produces new plays, classics, forgotten works, musicals and opera. It co-produces and tours widely in the UK and internationally while keeping deep roots in its neighbourhood. It frequently transfers shows to London's West End and invites local people to take part at its home in Waterloo. In 2016 the Young Vic became London's first Theatre of Sanctuary. Recent productions include Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers Size, Simon Stone's new version of Lorca's Yerma which opens at The Park Avenue Armory in New York City in March with Billie Piper reprising her multi award-wining performance, and Ivo van Hove's production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge (West End, Broadway, Paris), as well as Horizons, a season exploring the lives of refugees.
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 Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg 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 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 into an interim home (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.
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, and Arlington; Lou Reed's Berlin; the National Theater of Scotland's Black Watch and Let the Right One In; Kneehigh Theatre's Brief Encounter, 946 and Tristan & Yseult; Yael Farber's Mies Julie; Dmitry Krymov Lab's Opus No. 7; The Donmar Warehouse all-female Shakespeare Trilogy: Julius Caesar, Henry IV, The Tempest; Kate Tempest's Brand New Ancients; Tricycle Theatre's Red Velvet, the Young Vic production of A Streetcar Named Desire with Gillian Anderson; Mark Rylance's Nice Fish, the National Theatre's People, Places & Things, and the World Premiere of the complete Taylor Mac's A 24 Decade History of Popular Music, including the one-time only 24-hour marathon in 2016. St. Ann's has championed such artists as The Wooster Group, Mabou Mines, Jeff Buckley, Cynthia Hopkins, Daniel Kitson, Emma Rice and Kneehigh, 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 its original home in St. Ann's Church and the vastness and endless capacity for reconfiguration artists have harnessed in St. Ann's temporary warehouses in DUMBO.
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