One of West Cornwall’s most prevalent landmarks, the origins of The Minack Theatre in Porthcurno tell a fascinating tale.
Following the First World War a lady by the name of Rowena Cade moved to Cornwall along with her Mother and built a house on land at Minack Point.
In 1929 a group of village players staged a production of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in a nearby meadow at Crean, repeating the performance the following year. When the players decided that their next performance was to be ‘The Tempest’, Rowena Cade offered her garden by the sea as venue.
With the help of her Gardner Billy Rawlings, Rowena constructed rough seating and a terrace by hauling materials from the house and from the beach below via the windy path to the cliffside.
In 1932 ‘The Tempest’ was performed, with the sea as the play’s dramatic backdrop it was a rousing success.
Vowing to improve the theatre Rowena, with the help of Billy Rawlings and his friend Charles Angove worked tirelessly during the Winters throughout her life so that others could perform through the Summer months.
In 1955 the Minack’s first dressing rooms were built. In the 1970s, the theatre was managed by Lawrence Shove a renowned British sound 
recordist.
Rowena worked on improving her beloved theatre well in to her eighties, and over the years developed skills such as decorating cement surfaces with the tip of a screwdriver, etching beautiful Celtic designs and lettering in to them before the cement hardened and dried.
The theatre was registered as a Charitable Trust in 1976 and is now run by a local management team.
The Minack Theatre truly was a labour of love for Rowena, upon her death it was discovered she had even left sketches suggesting ways in which the theatre could be covered in rainy weather.
Despite Rowena’s death in 1983 at the age of eighty-nine the Cade family continued their involvement in the theatre; the General Manger of the Minack in 2015 was married to Rowena’s great niece.
The Minack Theatre is a marvel, and all who visit should look around in awe and remember the extraordinary woman who almost single-handedly fashioned this wonder from a Cornish cliff-face over eighty years ago.
