All the World's a Stage

As my junior high theatre department would continue: some of us just have better seats. Some people, though, carve out their own seats. Mom and I went to a place called the Minack Theatre in Porthcurno. It’s a stone ampitheatre that sits right on a cliff-face over the sea. That alone was enough to peak my interest. As a lover of theatre and the coast, it sounded like a cool place to visit. But while the place itself is cool, it’s really the story behind the place that’s impressive.

Rowena Cade was a very determined and tenacious woman. She was also a lover of the theatre and had a knack for designing costumes and props. Turns out, she had a knack for designing buildings as well. When a group wanted to perform The Tempest, she offered her back garden for the show, but there wasn’t really a stage area for them. So, the natural conclusion she came to was to simply build one for them. It took her whole life to build this stone theatre, materials for which she dragged up from the nearby beach and the carvings in the stone which she did by hand…with nothing but a screwdriver. What a woman!

No one believed that this “frail, old woman” could have done what she did, and she did have some help from two friends, Billy Rawlings and Thomas Angove. But what a testament to this woman’s vision that, not only is the building still standing, but it’s still in use all year long. She dedicated so much time to this dream of hers, even risking her own safety during WWII to crawl under barbed wire in order to trim the grass. It sounds slightly insane, I know, but I find it so inspiring to read of someone who loved something so much, who wanted to create something for the community, that she took a lifetime to make it a reality. And just to see the legacy she’s left behind…incredible.

As Shakespeare says: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances.’ Some people leave lasting impacts with their performance, long after they’ve left this ‘stage.’ It always gets me thinking about what I’m doing with my life, and what kinds of things I’m going to be remembered for (if I’m remembered at all). I think most of us want to leave this world in a better state than when we came, but it takes a certain kind of person to actually act on that drive and do something.

If you’re interested in reading anymore about Rowena’s story, here are a few links that can help you get started: http://www.minack.com/history.htm 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minack_Theatre