A new indoor wooden theatre was built next to Shakespeare's Globe in London and it will be named after the Globe's founder Sam Wanamaker, reported the BBC. The 340-seat theatre, which is scheduled to stage its first public performances in January 2014, will enable the Globe to offer live theatre throughout the year. This is because the open-air Globe theatre only stages productions from April to October. Plays in the indoor venue will run from October to April, with other events over the summer, such as early chamber music and opera.

The design of the theatre is based on a series of drawings found at Worcester College Oxford in the 1960s, believed to be the earliest set of designs for an English theatre in existence. The team behind the project has revealed that plays at the new theatre will be predominantly lit by candles. Entering this timber hand-crafted candle-lit intimate space will be like tripping into the 1600s.

When the Globe complex opened in 1997, the indoor theatre was left as a shell and has served as workshop and rehearsal studios. Now construction is fully under way, but another US$ 1.6 million needs to be raised to meet the US$ 12 million cost of the project, which receives no government subsidy.