August 16th | The Minack Thatre (First Performance) |
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On this day in 1932, the extraordinary Minack Theatre presented its first public performance, ‘The Tempest’. Later when the players were looking for a suitable place to perform, Rowena Cade, who lived in Minack House, decided that the cliffs below her garden would be the perfect setting. Over the winter of 1931 – 1932 Cade and her gardener, Billy Rawlings (pictured left) blew out part of the granite cliff and created a grass-covered stage and a series of terraces which became the Minack Theatre (pictured below).                                                                              
The family of Spondon – born Rowena Cade (1893–1983) moved to Lamorna after the First World War and bought the Minack headland in the 1920s for £100 where they built Minack House. Seven years before her death on March 26th, 1983, Cade created a charitable trust to own the theatre and her family are still heavily involved in the management of the theatre. |