A new, indoor space will allow the Globe to stage plays all year round
Shakespeare’s Globe is pressing ahead with its vision for the creation of an indoor Jacobean theatre, the shell of which already exists on its current site. The new building will be “the most complete recreation of an English renaissance indoor theatre yet attempted,” and will complement The Globe’s open-air stage, a replica of the playhouse for which Shakespeare wrote, which opened in 1997 after more than 27 years’ planning and four years’ construction. At the time, the indoor Jacobean theatre was left as a shell, to be divided and partitioned into rooms for education workshops and rehearsals. The new theatre will seat around 320 people, with two tiers of galleried seating and an authentic pit seating area. Designs for the new theatre are based around a set of plans discovered in the 1960s. Originally thought to be drawn by Inigo Jones, though now thought to be by his protégé John Webb, they are the earliest plans for an English theatre in existence.
One of the earliest recipients of capital funding from the Lottery, and one of the few projects at the time to come in on time and on budget, Shakespeare’s Globe has attracted international acclaim for its sustainable business model, as well as its performance and education work. (See http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/magazine/view.cfm?issue=223&id=5128) The fundraising campaign for the new building will be launched next month, with a view to major construction work starting in November 2012, and a first winter season in the building in November 2013. Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole said: “The faithful recreation of the Globe fourteen years ago revolutionised people’s ideas of what a theatre can, could and should be. The recreation of an indoor Jacobean theatre… will prove a revelation of equal magnitude.”