Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is an indoor theatre in the Shakespeare’s Globe complex on Bankside in Southwark. It was built using 17th-century plans for an indoor English theatre, echoing the style of the Blackfriars Theatre from Shakespeare’s time. The original Blackfriars stood across the river, not in Southwark. Its brick shell was constructed during the Globe’s building works in the 1990s. For years it served as a rehearsal and education space until funds allowed completion of the period interior. It opened to the public in January 2014 and was named after Sam Wanamaker, who led the Globe’s reconstruction. The playhouse was conceived as a reconstruction of the sixteenth-century Blackfriars Theatre, adapted as a playhouse in 1596 during Elizabeth’s reign. Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, began performing there in 1608. No reliable plans survive, so designers used drawings found at Worcester College, Oxford, first thought to be by Inigo Jones. Later research dated them to 1660 and attributed them to John Webb. Despite this, they remain the earliest known English theatre plans and guided the new theatre’s layout. Some early 17th-century features were added to the design. Visitors find an oak theatre inside the brick shell, designed by Jon Greenfield with Allies and Morrison. The thrust stage has a musicians’ gallery above it, and the ceiling is richly painted. There are 340 seats: benches in the pit and two horseshoe galleries. The first gallery’s shutters admit artificial daylight, while beeswax candles in sconces and six adjustable chandeliers provide light when shutters close. The plays staged include early performances from the original Blackfriars, such as The Duchess of Malfi and The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Winter seasons have featured Shakespeare’s late tragicomic works.