Theatre company launches capital fundraising campaign
May 18, 2006, Saskatoon StarPhoenix by Lori Coolican
Persephone Theatre unveiled architectural drawings for its new $11-million riverbank home Wednesday as the decades-strong theatre company launched its capital fundraising campaign at a downtown hotel.
"A great theatre like Persephone Theatre deserves a great home," said Industry and Resource Minister Eric Cline, who along with his wife, Pauline, made one of the first private donations to the campaign.
"So we're here to finish the job of building this new home. And I think that in the process, in many ways, we're building a new heart of our city."
On hand for the announcement - and a little overwhelmed to be in Saskatoon for the first time in 20 years - was Janet Wright, famous for her role as Emma on the hit show Corner Gas. Wright co-founded Persephone along with her sister Susan and Brian Richmond in 1974. She will serve as honorary chair of the capital campaign, while Dr. Bill Thomlinson, Executive Director of the Canadian Light Source, will serve as official chair.
"I'm so proud of what's happening with this theatre," Wright told the crowd. "All I'm going to say is it was passion when we started the theatre, but I see some faces of people who have helped us…It's always been the classiest city in Saskatchewan, we know that."
Persephone is about $4 million away from its final fundraising goal, having already gathered $2.5 million in centennial money from the federal government, $2.5 million from the provincial government and $1 million from the city, on top of the initial $1 million private donation from the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation that kicked the project off almost four years ago. A sustained round of applause greeted Ellen Remai as she stepped to the podium.
"The theatre has the capacity to move us in many ways," she said. "It makes us emotionally richer, strengthens our social and cultural fabric, fills us with thought and wonder, gives us the opportunity to see both the good and the bad, and will change us for the better. Persephone's new downtown location will enhance its visibility and profile. It will serve as a source of pride for the city and for the province."
A building designed for live performances will make a big difference in the company's productions, which have been staged in a converted church on Rusholme Road for more that 20 years. Artistic director Tibor Feheregyhazi calls the current stage a "podium."
"Now we'll have a proper stage with a fly floor, everything," he said.
The $11-million facility, expected to open on the River Landing site in the fall of 2007, will feature a main venue with a traditional proscenium arch stage that can extend into a partial thrust stage over the orchestra pit. It will include seating for 450, including balcony and box seats, wing space, expanded workshops, new sound and lighting equipment and a second, smaller "black box" venue with seating for 100. The company expects to operate with the same budget and staff complement as before.
The building appears to have its back to the river. The idea of including a viewing area looking south from the theatre's fly floor was considered during the design phase, but it was eventually discarded because the city has plans to construct a destination complex to the south, which would block the view, Feheregyhazi explained.
"We are not alone - we may be alone now, but maybe in the next 10 years or 15 years (we won't be). The city will build something nice there, I think. We have a door, so that if they build it up people can go through everywhere, we have a connection."
Patrons standing in the curved, glass-walled lobby will have a view of Remai's spa hotel, also to be built in River Landing, and the lights of Second Avenue.
Terry Scadden, executive director of downtown business association The Partnership, can't wait for the new theatre to add a cultural hub to the south downtown. "How could anybody not be ecstatically happy that Saskatoon's premier professional theatre group is going to be downtown? With all the threads that there are to traditional business districts with big-box developments, we have to carve out our niche of what do we represent to the people of Saskatoon," he said in an interview. "I think it's going to be very good for downtown."
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