Saskatoon’s Persephone Theatre has kicked off $2 million, over three years, fundraising campaign for a three-stage roof repair.

The theatre has been in the building since it was built 17 years ago and Breanne Harmon, the executive director at Persephone, says a very common material for the time was used in the rigid roof installation which has proven to be incompatible with Saskatchewan weather. It expands in hot summer weather and contracts in the cold winter which has created gaps. The lack of flexibility in the material is considered a roof assembly failure.

Harmon says there are three portions of the roof they are addressing and the first one, which they considered the most important, is the fly tower which is over the stage and audience.  “We actually have a number of children’s kiddie pools up in our fly gallery which is 60 feet above the stage that captures the water as it falls. We have tarps up there, there’s a sump pump. Our technical director Jody Longworth has spent the last number of years going up and down, it’s about 94 spiral stairs, to get the water out, to sump pump it out, to have it go through the building hatch,” she explains.

Malcolm and Marilyn Leggett have kicked off the fundraising with a $300,000 donation. Harmon says they have also been successful in securing cultural infrastructure funding from the City of Saskatoon for the first phase of the project which will address the roof over the fly tower. The first portion is slated for repair this summer starting June 25th.  They plan to open September 25 which will kick off their 50th milestone season leaving two remaining stages of the roof repair that will need to be undertaken.