Joe Rizzo said he remembers getting the call around 3 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2021. The voice on the other end told him the Triumvirate Theatre was on fire.
“I woke my wife up and we got in the car, we ran down there,” the executive director of the theater said. “Already the backstage area and the office, my office, were already collapsed on top of each other.”
The past year since the playhouse burned down, Rizzo said, has been full of hardship but also camaraderie.
“It was a big year of loss for us obviously, but it was also a big year of gain for us as well,” he said. “The outpouring of support that we got was really touching.”
According to previous Clarion reporting, the building was a “total loss” after the blaze. To this day, fire officials aren’t sure about what started the burn, Rizzo said.
Just a week after the fire last February, Rizzo and others started a relief fund through the Alaska Community Foundation. Since then, the Rasmuson Foundation has awarded Triumvirate a $1 million grant for its rebuilding efforts. Other donors have pitched in to total about $1.8 million in funding so far.
The Kenai City Council also awarded Triumvirate Theatre a piece of land near Daubenspeck Park last June for the new playhouse.
Rizzo estimates the project will cost around $4.7 million, and he hopes to break ground in May 2023.
“And because of the pandemic, and because of supply lines and all of those things that are happening all over the world, the cost of constructing anything right now is pretty high, especially compared to what it was two or three years ago,” he said.
But even so, Triumvirate has persevered.
“I think the other thing that exemplified kind of the legacy of Triumvirate Theatre, you know, a lot of the very first donations that we got were from 35- (and) 40-year-old professionals who started off as awkward teenagers in our program years ago,” Rizzo said. “And it was very, very sweet that they remembered to help us out.”
A lot of what makes the playhouse unique, he said, is the emphasis on kids in community theater.
“We’re kind of a feeder program for the high school programs or even for the other community theater group that’s here in town,” Rizzo said. Among all its fundraising efforts, Triumvirate has still been able to host performances this year in various locations, including Soldotna Creek Park and Kenai Central High School.
Rizzo said as much as possible, the folks at Triumvirate are trying to move forward. Because after all, the show must go on.
“So with the fire, what we’ve tried to do is not just be an organization with its hand out all the time saying … ‘Our theater burned down,’” he said. “But we’ve been trying to maintain our programs and going on the best we can.”
Reach reporter Camille Botello at camille.botello@peninsulaclarion.com.
