Minack Theatre
Cornwall’s spectacular Minack Theatre is an open-air theatre constructed out of the rock above the sea at Porthcurno.
The theatre may look as if it’s been here forever, but it’s actually less than a hundred years old. Minack means a rocky place, ‘meynek’ in Cornish. If you’d been here in 1931, standing where our stage is now, you’d have been clinging to a sloping cliff, knee deep in gorse, with a ninety-foot drop to the sea behind you. Back then the drama was made by nature alone.
Minack’s creator was Rowena Cade. Brought up in a genteel Edwardian family, she was inspired to transform a Cornish cliff-face into an open-air arena, much of it literally built with her own hands. Now the theatre welcomes over a quarter of a million people each year to enjoy the stunning ocean views and experience the magic of live performance in this iconic space.
Each year, the stage hosts over 200 live performances at the Minack, including plays, musicals, opera, music and children’s events. Tens of thousands of people come here to experience a show at the theatre under the stars and become a part of its extraordinary, on-going story.
