With record snowfall so far this holiday season, there’s a chance you might already be a little tired of the white fluffy stuff, especially if you have to repeatedly shovel it off your driveway and sidewalks.
But step inside the Paramount Theatre to “White Christmas,” and I guarantee you will be delighted with the snow that drifts through the audiences of this Broadway Series production playing in downtown Aurora through Jan. 11.
Mother Nature – specifically a “polar vortex disruption,” according to meteorologists – might be responsible for all this snow we are getting outside. But within the Paramount walls, the snow falls to head electrician Jake Hartge, a 28-year-old Auroran – born and raised here – who comes from a century-long family history of electricians skilled in stage technology.
Because “all theater atmosphere is controlled by electricity,” says Hartge, he is responsible for the “weather” taking place in these big stage productions – including haze, fog, rain and of course all the snowflakes.
Hartge tells me he fell in love with this industry after seeing “Peter Pan” at the Paramount when he was 4 years old. After splitting his time as a theater kid between musical direction and the technical side, he followed in the footsteps of his father, the retired head electrician at the United Center in Chicago, as well as both his uncles – one who still works at the Lyric Opera – and his grandfather and great- grandfather, whose union memberships with IATSE Local 2 go back 100 years.
“It is,” he said, “just in my blood.”
After plenty of contract theater gigs with the union, starting at age 20, Hartge landed his “dream job” at the Paramount three years ago. Which means he also was around to help turn the Aurora theater into a winter wonderland for last year’s hit Disney musical “Frozen.”
Hartge describes those icy crystals “from Elsa’s hands” that stormed the stage and floated through the entire theater as magical, fanciful, while this year’s “White Christmas” flurries are “more nostalgic.”
If you’ve not already seen this Irving Berlin classic, I hope you have tickets to do so in the coming weeks because it is a high-energy spectacle that will leave you with a warm feeling all over, no matter what the temperature is outside.
Turns out there are two different types of snow swirling around this holiday production.
What showers much of the audiences, says Hartge, are snowflakes, made from a soap-like fluid, produced by four snow machines — two of which are placed in the ceiling by the spotlights and two more on the side towers to the left and right of the theater’s front house.
“We use the really super dry fluid” so it “does not soak” the audience and the floors, he says, adding there’s not all that much clean-up because “most of the audience take the snow with them.”
As head electrician for the Paramount Theatre, Jake Hartge is responsible for making “weather” happen in its productions, including the snow that falls on the stage and throughout the audiences of “White Christmas,” now playing at the theater in downtown Aurora through Jan. 11. (Denise Crosby/The Beacon-News)
On stage, Hartge goes on to explain, in order “to protect the actors’ costumes,” the snowflakes are made up of tiny pieces of plastic – “like shredded grocery bags” – spit out by “chicken wire” that “gradually moves back and forth” inside two boxes.
Sometimes the most effective special effects in theater really are low-tech, Hartge admits, noting the snow machines in the ceiling were put in place “just with a rope and a guy (in this case, the electrician himself) pulling it up in the air.”
Hartge, who works closely with lighting designer Greg Hofmann to bring his artistic vision to life, certainly has plenty of other heavy lifting to do, including running all the lighting cues. That’s why he can be found at every performance of “White Christmas,” sitting high in the balcony in the tech booth until it’s “time to let it snow.”
That’s when Hartge likes to lean over the balcony edge “and watch the house react.”
It never fails to make him smile. And it can’t help but fuel his pride in a legacy that has helped bring theater magic to generations of audiences.
Because his wife Lily is a stage actor, Hartge knows there’s a good chance their 2-year-old daughter Alice will follow in these live entertainment footsteps. Whether she wants to be on stage or behind it remains to be seen, of course.
For now, her father says with a smile, “it’s just really neat to be part of the Paramount family.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
