SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE, LONDON:  the outdoor ‘wooden O’ playhouse 

John Ronayne was recruited by Sam Wanamaker in 1976 to work on the authentic re-creation of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, very near to its original Bankside site in Southwark, south London.

Working with the project’s architects and scholars, Ronayne’s role was to propose and specify the likeliest authentic decoration. 20 years of research, visual evidence and scale models resulted in a final scheme, summarised in the Cambridge University Press book ‘Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt’, which accompanied the theatre’s opening in 1997.