Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is an indoor Jacobean-style theatre at Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside, London, built as a reconstruction of the candlelit indoor playhouses that flourished in early seventeenth-century England. Its intimate wooden galleries, lit almost entirely by beeswax candles, create an atmosphere unlike any other performance space in the city, placing audiences in close proximity to the stage and to the plays originally written for such enclosed venues. The theatre takes its name from the American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, whose decades-long campaign to rebuild Shakespeare's Globe on its original Southwark site made both the open-air Globe and this indoor companion possible.

The playhouse specialises in work from the Jacobean and Caroline repertoire, alongside new writing that responds to that tradition. Currently on stage is A World Elsewhere, continuing the venue's commitment to intimate, candlelit performance rooted in the particular character of this extraordinary reconstruction.