Minack Theater

To understand the significance of Minack Theater, one must first know Rowena Cade. I see her spirit and determination in my older daughter, Gretchen. After WWI, Rowena and her widowed mother moved to Portucono from Cheltenham. She found this piece of land and bought it for £100.

The children and adults of the village wanted to put on an open air production of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” in 1929 and Ms. Cade generously allowed them to use her property (which was basically her lawn overlooking the ocean) and helped sew the costumes for this production. It was so successful that they put on the production again the following summer. This inspired Rowena, at 38 years old, to create a theater cliff side to the ocean which is no small feat.

This determined woman along with her gardener Billy Rawlings undertook this huge project making it what it is today.

They had to carry up bags and bags of sand from the beach to make the cement. In order to do this, they first had to create steps going down to the beach to obtain the sand. She would use the tip of a screwdriver to create Celtic drawings before the cement set in order to make it look like the stage had been there for a long time.

This slight, tough woman hauled up 12 15-foot pieces of lumber from a ship wreck to use for building the theater. The climb is no joke.

The Porthcurno Beach was used during WWII as secret cable telegraph site, as well as during WWI. There was barbed wire set up in the beach as well as being guarded and it has been said the Rowena would scramble underneath it to collect sand for the theater.

A view from the beach up to the theater, this puts the building of the theater to an even greater perspective.

This is a great place to visit and while we were there a fantastic character actor was portraying Billy Rawlings and telling stories of this magical place. He truly had the gift of storytelling.