About the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

The Playhouse is the indoor theatre of Shakespeare's Globe, run by the Shakespeare's Globe Trust, and it opened in January 2014 with The Duchess of Malfi, directed by Dominic Dromgoole.

What is the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse?

It's a theatre built the way an indoor playhouse of Shakespeare's later years would have been, rather than a copy of any one building. Its layout comes from late 17th-century drawings attributed to John Webb, and it's close in style to the Blackfriars Playhouse, where Shakespeare's company played indoors in winter. Inside a brick shell, built along with the rest of the Globe, it has a frame of green oak, decoration copied from surviving Jacobean buildings, and a painted ceiling based on one at Cullen House in Scotland, which was lost to fire in 1987.

The Globe's own researchers designed it with the architects Allies & Morrison, and the ceiling was painted off-site by a team led by Zaza Opperman.

Who was Sam Wanamaker?

The American actor and director who started the project to rebuild Shakespeare's Globe. He founded the Shakespeare's Globe Trust in 1971 and died in 1993, before the Globe opened, and the Playhouse is named in his honour.

Other venues to know

• Shakespeare's Globe, the open-air theatre on the same site, with 1,570 places and a standing Yard
• Menier Chocolate Factory, a small producing theatre on Southwark Street, a few minutes' walk away
• Donmar Warehouse, 251 seats in Seven Dials, another small theatre where every seat is close