Venue: Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
Town: London, GB

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is an indoor theatre forming part of the Shakespeare's Globe complex, along with the recreated Globe Theatre on Bankside in Southwark, London. Built by making use of 17th-century plans for an indoor English theatre, the playhouse recalls the layout and style of the Blackfriars Theatre (which also existed in Shakespeare's time), although it is not an exact reconstruction. Unlike the Globe, the original Blackfriars was not in Southwark but rather across the river. The shell of the playhouse was built during the construction of the Globe complex in the 1990s. The smaller unfinished building was used as a space for education workshops and rehearsals until enough money was raised to complete its true-to-the-period interior. It opened for public performances in January 2014, named after actor Sam Wanamaker, the leading figure in the Globe's reconstruction. The shell was intended to house a simulacrum of the sixteenth-century Blackfriars Theatre from the opposite side of the Thames, adapted as a playhouse in 1596 during Elizabeth's reign. The Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's playing company, began to use it in 1608, five years into the Jacobean era. As no reliable plans of the Blackfriars Theatre are known, the plan for the new theatre was based on drawings found in the 1960s at Worcester College, Oxford, at first thought to date from the early 17th century, and to be the work of Inigo Jones. The shell was built to accommodate a theatre as specified by the drawings, and the planned name was the Inigo Jones Theatre. In 2005, the drawings were dated to 1660 and attributed to John Webb. They nevertheless represent the earliest known plan for an English theatre, and are thought to approximate the layout of the Blackfriars Theatre. Some features believed to be typical of earlier in the 17th century were added to the new theatre's design. The shell was initially used as a rehearsal space, and for education projects. On 24 February 2012 it was ann