| Open to visitors all year round, and displaying | | | | powered lights, some lights run from Rowena's house, |
| productions of plays during its open season in the | | | | and the headlights of cars. After this performance, |
| summer months, the Minack theatre is the incredible | | | | Rowena decided that she wanted to make a full open |
| and impressive life work of one woman. | | | | air theatre at Minack, and set to work doing it. |
| Rowena Cade planned, built and financed the entire | | | | With the help of the people who'd aided her with the |
| thing herself, employing people to help her, but always | | | | stage, she set about constructing seating, walls and a |
| involved in hands-on work herself, and taking on a | | | | more permanent stage. Granite boulders were hauled |
| much larger portion of work and responsibilities than | | | | in, along with stones, pebbles and earth. The slope was |
| anybody else. Much of the theatre is hand-built by her. | | | | terraced, and each terrace was levelled with earth and |
| The area that Minack theatre is built in is already an | | | | rocks to provide seating for audiences. Walls were |
| astoundingly beautiful place, with inconceivably | | | | built behind the stage to provide boundaries to the |
| dramatic cliffs plummeting straight into the ocean, and | | | | stage and for the use of props. |
| the land above these rugged and wild, but sheltering | | | | As time went on and resources dried up, Rowena |
| the theatre perfectly. It creates a wonderful landscape | | | | started using concrete to complete the building, but |
| for plays to be put on, surrounded by the rugged | | | | rather than having it ruin the construction, breaking up |
| beauty of nature, but contained within an intricately | | | | the granite with ugly concrete, she carved in intricate |
| structured design. When you know all this, the name of | | | | Celtic letters and designs, making the whole thing come |
| the place makes sense, as Minack in Cornish means | | | | together. |
| 'rocky place'. During the construction itself, only some | | | | The theatre wasn't able to pay its way for most of its |
| stones and a wheelbarrow were lost to the cliffs as | | | | existence, and so Rowena made up the losses with |
| well, which is impressive and rather lucky. | | | | her own money. Eventually, it was handed over to a |
| The first production performed at Minack theatre was | | | | charitable fund set up entirely to look after the theatre, |
| Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', and at that point there | | | | and they are who run it now after Rowena's death in |
| was only a stage and rough seating on the slope | | | | 1983. |
| towards it. The performance was lit only by battery | | | | |