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The stage
An open-air theatre above a gully, with granite jutting into the sea
The Minack Theatre is an open-air theatre above a gully, with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea. It is at Porthcurno, four miles from Land's End. Its season runs from Easter to the end of October.
Rowena Cade
Rowena Cade bought the headland and built a house on it
After the First World War Rowena Cade moved to Cornwall, bought land at Minack Point and built a house there for herself and her mother. Her sister was the author Katharine Burdekin, who lived with them from the 1920s.
The Tempest
The Tempest was staged there in 1932 with the sea as a backdrop
In 1929 Rowena Cade joined a local group of players who staged A Midsummer Night's Dream in a meadow. For their next play, The Tempest, she offered her cliff garden. It was performed in 1932 with the sea behind the stage.
Headlights
The first performance was lit by batteries and car headlights
Rowena Cade and her gardener, Billy Rawlings, made a terrace and rough seating, hauling materials down from the house or up from the beach below. The stage took six months to build.
Still building
She kept improving it each winter, well into her 80s
Rowena Cade resolved to improve the theatre, working over the winter months each year with Billy Rawlings and other friends. She was still working on it well into her 80s. In 1976 the theatre became a charitable trust.
Day 3, afternoon
It comes after Land’s End. Then Porthcurno Beach.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Minack Theatre and the Wikipedia article Rowena Cade, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.