Two of the bard’s greatest plays, Macbeth and The Tempest, were scheduled for this summer — huge productions perfect for a long-awaited celebration. But the $6-million project stood lonely until early September.

The grand unveiling finally came through socially-distanced tours, however; not plays.

“It’s very weird, very strange to be doing a grand opening in a pandemic and open a space we didn’t get to do a show in,” said Will Brooks, artistic director, in a recent interview. “But it’s nice to be finally reaching the end, and it’s nice to finally be able to show it off.”

The theatre seats approximately the same number of patrons as the former location but is much more flexible in terms of production design. Permanent seating is arranged in a U-shape and additional seating can be added.

“It’s set up in such a way that you can arrange in in various kinds of ways and capacities,” Brooks said. “It’s about an 80-foot circle and will seat anywhere from zero to 400.”

It can easily be used for theatre-in-the-round productions, which SOTS has been unable to stage in the old space in recent years. “If you wanted to change that, it was a significant job to rebuild it . . . you couldn’t do it on a regular basis,” Brooks explained.

“On the old site, we had to build a park and build a theatre venue before we could even start doing what we were supposed to be doing, which was creating a show for the audience. It took about six weeks to turn that empty space into a theatre venue. In this case, we can do the same work in about under a week. That allows us to spend more time doing our art work, and it also allows us to invite other people to use the space.”

In the spring and fall, Brooks can see the Children’s Festival taking advantage of the site, for example, and powwows being held; and people have expressed interest in holding family events such as weddings.

“It will be a 12-months of the year site. We’re really hoping that it becomes an active winter space as well.” The three permanent buildings — the box office, bar/concession and dressing room — have year-round amenities and will remain heated in the colder months.

The new theatre and site became reality thanks to broad donorship and wide community support, Brooks said: federal and provincial funds, many people who gave at their financial comfort level, and big donors including former Cameco Corp. executives Jerry Grandey and the late Bob Stein.

“It was a fascinating project in terms of how many people kept saying ‘yes.’ It’s also been a real partnership, a relationship-building kind of project. From the very beginning, we started by building or rebuilding relationships with the city and Meewasin (Valley Authority).

“Throughout the whole thing, we really tried to take our focus of not just stopping at the level of what we needed, but really making sure we were bringing in voices and partners and stakeholders.”

Two examples of community vision inclusion are design elements and spaces that support other groups, among them the Saskatoon Road Runners Association and the local Indigenous community.

The Road Runners were among those affected by the Meewasin trail stopping at the original site. The organization worked with SOTS to ensure the path now runs by the site, and also worked with the city to install a four-season washroom and water fountain.

SOTS also entered into discussions with Indigenous consultant Joseph Naytowhow and the Saskatoon Tribal Council, and signed memorandums of understanding regarding the use and design of the site.

“Once of the things that came out of (the discussions) regularly was, it would be great if we had a place we could design from our perspective that was on the riverbank that was a nice, quiet place for prayer and contemplation,” Brooks said.

Nutrien was approached as a sponsor, and the contemplation circle went under construction in September with Indigenous culture in mind, including the four directions, large timbers and a teepee shape.

There is also a “beautiful lighting feature” inspired by Grandey, one of the campaign co-chairs, who connected SOTS with, and paid for, a world-class designer for the site lights.

SOTS had hoped to resurrect the two shows planned for this season in 2021, but Brooks expects that would be a challenge.

“They were big shows for us; they were expensive shows for us. Obviously COVID finances are not the same as pre-COVID finances. Right now, we’re just in a holding pattern and in the next couple of months we’ll start to plan next year’s festival.

“No one can predict the future, but I’m reasonably confident we’ll be able to hold some kind of festival next year, but at the same time I’m pretty confident it won’t look like a standard Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan festival.

“If we have the same kind of regulations that exist right now next summer — which is pretty likely — we can only have 30 audience members and there’s no way we can do a 14-person cast.

“There’s a ton of smaller-scale work . . . that we’d be really excited to do but usually we can’t. Oddly enough, we might be able to use this as an opportunity to experiment with some of that kind of work.”

-Joanne Paulson