Starring at The Minack
Prop girl Niva Poole had great fun as part of the operatic society team which put on a show at The Minack Theatre
have such wonderful memories of the time our operatic society was given the once in a lifetime opportunity of performing at the incredible Minack amphitheatre, perched on the cliffside at Portcurno, Cornwall.
Our production was West Side Story and we were to have a week’s slot in The Minack’s summer season! To have the chance to act at this iconic venue was something we’d
Idreamed of, but had never imagined we’d actually get to do.
To get the show on the road was something of a military exercise. Everything – the orchestra, lighting, scenery, costumes, etc had to be taken down the cliffside by hand. A chain gang was set up from the lorry at the top to the stage at the bottom… and what a stage!
With the sea and the moody, everchanging sky creating a breathtaking backdrop, it would be difficult to find a more spectacular venue.
Saturday and Sunday were spent
Enjoying a flask of tea before a performance in the Sixties setting up and rehearsing... then it was crunch time. The plan was that the powers-that-be at The Minack would, after watching the dress rehearsal, decide whether we had reached the required standard for
The moody sky created a breathtaking backdrop for this spectacular venue
a public performance. Luckily for us, all went well, but it was 2am before we could fall into bed!
Most of the cast and crew had taken a week’s holiday from work and booked into holiday cottages at the tiny village of Polgigga nearby. We were all close to each other and after every performance someone would host a party. I would trot along clutching a tipple and a few nibbles to share, and many a night I was to be found with a cup of tea in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, not knowing which I needed the most!
I was part of the props team and we had the daunting task of procuring, among other items, flick knives, a bed,
The jaw-dropping view from the amphitheatre makes it the perfect setting for shows at The Minack
To stop it all blowing away, props and equipment had to be chained to pillars
a jukebox, juicing machine, slash curtain, guns, rolls of fabric and dressmakers’ dummies.
The dummies gave us the biggest headache as they kept blowing over in the wind which came in a squall up from the sea. Sandbags and stage weights were attached to the bases but still they wobbled. As a last resort we tethered them with chains to the strategically placed granite pillars. This worked well but caused a headache when we tried to remove them during a blackout!
It was a wonderful week and the weather was perfect – glorious blue skies, tall ships gliding by, dolphins popping up to say hello and the moonlight turning the sea silver. More than 5,000 tickets were sold to capacity audiences at almost every performance.
It opened our eyes to the huge amount of work that goes into a show before, during and after the run. This magical week had brought the society together as nothing else could and we all felt blessed to have been a part of it.
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