Shakespeare's Globe Centre (USA) Centre for Globe Research

Chronology of the current reconstruction

Sam Wanamaker (1919-1993)

1934--Sam Wanamaker visits the Chicago World's Fair, which included a half-scale Globe and thirty minute Shakespeare plays.

1936--Pictured at right, Sam Wanamaker performs at the Great Lakes Festival in Cleveland, Ohio, which included a mock Globe. Sam was seventeen years old. Note the schedule next to Sam in the picture. His troupe performed several condensed versions of Elizabethan plays.

1949--Sam first visits England to film Give Us This Day. While there, he went looking for a memorial to Shakespeare and his Globe Theatre, but found only this plaque on the wall of a brewery on the plot believed to be the Globe's.

1951--Sam returns to England and stays.

1968--Shakespeare's Globe Trust is formed; the battle to rebuild the Globe begins.

1969--The Greater London Council announces an urban-renewal plan for the South Bank of the Thames. Wanamaker proposes that a theatre be included.

1970--Southwark Council offers the Globe Trust a one acre riverfront site.

1971--The first World Shakespeare Conference passes a resolution supporting Sam's idea; Globe Trust presents its first proposal for the Bankside plot. It includes an extensive development of shops and flats.

1972--Pentagram, the architectural company that will eventually design and build the Globe, is formed by Theo Crosby (1925-1994), Globe architect.

Through the early Seventies, the Globe Trust sponsors a fund raising series of theatre in a temporary tent that approximated the dynamics of an Elizabethan playhouse. Notable stars included Vanessa Redgrave, directed by Sam Wanamaker. Two more pictures from the John Player seasons appear below: the site, and inside the tent.

1974--29 August, Busch Gardens, Virginia, announces plans to build a replica Globe as part of its "The Old Country" exhibit. The plans for "an elongated octagon" and acting company, were never completed.

1982--April 23, Shakespeare's birthday, Globe Trust receives title to the .8 acre site to rebuild the Globe Theatre. A few days later, elections eject Labour officials who made the deal. New officials balk at the agreement.

1984-- Oct 24, new Southwark council officially informs Globe Trust that it had "voided" the agreement that the previous council had made with the Trust. A £12 million suit follows, not for damages, but for non-performance of agreement.

1985--summer, at the Toronto conference of the American Theatre Association, a panel convened by Franklin J. Hildy studies the latest findings on the Globe.
--1st issue of The Southwark Globe, autumn.
--David Orr's new proposal for the complex includes 51 housing units, 12 shops, 3 workshops, and a new depot for the road sweepers who caused some of the logistical problems by refusing to vacate the site promised to the Globe Trust.
--Friends of the Southwark Globe established, mainly by Southwark residents in favor of the project.
--Shakespeare Globe Center, Japan, formed at Meisi University in Tokyo.

1986--March, presentation of Kurosawa's Ran as a fundraising event.
--April, "Interior of the Globe" seminar, sponsored by the Globe Trust's Academic Committee takes place in London.
--June 26, The legal battle with the Southwark Council is over as the courts find in favor of the Globe Trust. The plan to rebuild Shakespeare's Globe will go forward.

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