8-798: Rowena Cade (1893–1983) was the creator of the Minack Theatre in Porthcurno , Cornwall , UK. Cade was born in Spondon near Derby on 2 August 1893. She was the older sister of Katharine Burdekin and with her two brothers they lived at The Homestead in Spondon. Rowena Cade's family sold their house in Spondon and Cheltenham and moved to Lamorna in West Penwith , Cornwall after the First World War. She discovered and bought
16-480: A suitable location for the play. Miss Cade and her gardener, Billy Rawlings, made a terrace and rough seating, hauling materials down from the house or up via the winding path from the beach below. In 1932, The Tempest was performed with the sea as a dramatic backdrop, to great success. Miss Cade resolved to improve the theatre, working over the course of the winter months each year (with the help of Billy Rawlings, Charles and Thomas Angove and other friends), to create
24-465: The Minack headland in the 1920s for £100 and built a house. Her sister's marriage had ended in 1922 and she, and later her partner, also lived in Minack. After Cade put on a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1929, she began searching for a suitable venue for a permanent outdoor stage. The theatre is carved into the granite cliffs at Porthcurno, just a few miles from Land’s End. She built
32-498: The end of October and includes a wide range of music and theatre. Each year, the Minack produces several professional productions as well as hosting visiting companies. It has appeared in many lists of the world's most spectacular theatres. The theatre was the brainchild of Rowena Cade , who moved to Cornwall after the First World War and built a house for herself and her mother on land at Minack Point for £100. Her sister
40-414: The theatre herself with the help of her gardener Billy Rawlings in 1931–32. The stage took six months to build and the first performance was of Shakespeare's The Tempest in summer 1932. Without any formal lighting, the performance used batteries and car headlights to light the stage. In 1976, Cade gave the theatre to a charitable trust. She died on 26 March 1983. The Cade family continued to be involved in
48-472: The theatre that exists today. She was still working on it well into her 80s. Rowena Cade died in 1983 shortly before her 90th birthday. In 1944, the theatre was used as a location for the Gainsborough Studios film Love Story , starring Stewart Granger and Margaret Lockwood but inclement weather forced them to retreat to a studio mock-up. In 1955, the first dressing rooms were built. In
56-654: The theatre – the general manager in 2015 was married to Rowena's great niece. The theatre is now managed by Philip Jackson and has featured in a number of BBC programmes about the South West of Britain. Minack Theatre The Minack Theatre ( Cornish : Gwariva Veynek ) is an open-air theatre , constructed above a gully with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea. The theatre is at Porthcurno , four miles (six kilometres) from Land's End in Cornwall , England. The Minack's performing season runs from Easter to
64-400: Was the feminist dystopian author Katharine Burdekin , who lived with them from the 1920s. In 1929, Rowena Cade became involved with a local village group of players who staged Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night's Dream in a nearby meadow at Crean, repeating the production the next year. They decided that their next production would be The Tempest and Miss Cade offered her cliff garden as
#167832