Leaders of the open-air Shakespeare's Globe theater in London said on Tuesday that its new indoor theater space will open in January 2014 and be named for Sam Wanamaker, the American actor and director who led the decades-long effort to rebuild the Globe on the south bank of the Thames River.
The new 340-seat theater will be designed in the Jacobean tradition, with perhaps the most notable touch being the candles that will light much of the space, according to the Globe's artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole. The construction of the new Sam Wanamaker Theater is costing approximately 7.5 million pounds, or about $12 million, and 6.5 million pounds have been raised so far, a spokeswoman for the theater said.
The inaugural production for the new theater will be announced next year, the spokeswoman added. The space, which will have two tiers of galleried seating and a pit seating area, will feature Jacobean plays by Webster, Marlowe, and Ford as well as works by Sh akespeare.
While the Globe is a replica of the wooden open-air theater where some of Shakespeare's plays were produced in the 16th century, the new theater space was envisioned by Wanamaker and others years ago to augment the Globe for Jacobean works that were performed indoors during the 16th and 17th centuries.
“The Sam Wanamaker Theater will allow the Globe to continue its experimental vision of going back to the future,†Mr. Dromgoole said in a statement. “Just as with the Globe itself, these unique playing conditions offer an opportunity to refresh our understanding of Jacobean theater, and to provoke new visions for the future of how theater can be made.â€
Wanamaker, who performed on Broadway mostly in the 1940s and ‘50s and appeared in such films as “The Concrete Jungle†and “Private Benjamin,†died in 1993.
