The theatre is used for music concerts, lectures and University ceremonies, but not for drama until 2015 when the Christ Church Dramatic Society staged a production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

With the triumph of the Restoration and with it the Church of England, Dean Fell, Vice-Chancellor of the University, sought to revive a project proposed in the 1630s by the late William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury: a separate building whose sole use would be graduation and degree ceremonies.

Instead, he decided to use the "geometrical flat floor" grid developed twenty years before by Oxford professor John Wallis.

It involved ... creating a series of trusses which were built up from shorter section[s] and held in place by their own weight, with help from judiciously placed iron bolts and plates ... [S]o effective [was the roof] that for nearly a century the University Press stored its books ... and for many years it was the largest unsupported floor in existence ...[1]In 1720, surveyors inspecting the roof, following a rumour that it was no longer safe, were both surprised and impressed at what they discovered.

The thirty-two oil on canvas panels originally painted by King Charles II’s court painter, Robert Streater, were removed and conserved.

[5] In May 2024, during the Israel–Hamas war protests in the United Kingdom, the Sheldonian Theatre played centre stage for Oxford University students, who listed their Gaza demands there, in reaction to civilian deaths.

[9] The theatre features prominently in Max Beerbohm's 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson and was used as stand in for Harvard in the 1980 film Heaven's Gate.