19-Jun-14 – After the sun goes down on Saturday, October 4, expect 90 minutes of spectacle as the Chicago River becomes the stage for an event celebrating the city’s epic resurgence after the fire of 1871.

“Fire is just much cooler at night,” explained Rebecca Rugg, producer of the Great Chicago Fire Festival, at a briefing on Wednesday to the Chicago Harbor Safety Committee.

Representatives of the theater company Redmoon briefed the committee on plans to turn their river into a sea of pyrotechnics from State Street to Columbus Drive.

“We’ve just been fully funded as of a month ago, so now we’re going very fast,” said Rugg (left). “Our design is turning into fabrication and as it does so, things are changing because either it’s too expensive to make the amazing things we dreamed about or it’s not engineering-wise plausible. So things are still changing but we’re getting into our final shape.”

It will be a day, promises Redmoon, of “spectacle performance featuring fire effects, elegantly crafted sculptures, massive mechanical contraptions, human powered watercraft, and certified pyrotechnics.”

Three 40 x 24-foot barges, or what the theater company calls “floating performance platforms,” will be set up further east, then brought downstream and moored along the banks of the Chicago River’s main branch.

At 7:45 p.m., about 30 minutes after sunset, on the DuSable Bridge at Michigan Avenue, a Grand Marshall still to be determined will officiate over the lowering to the river of six fiery “cauldrons.”

“Think of them as a torch,” says Alex Balestrieri, director of Redmoon for Hire, the business arm of the otherwise not-for-profit organization. “That fire is taken by cauldron to several watercraft and those watercraft each pull a buoy, which we should think of as a floating, rigid, flaming sculpture. These craft will be lit and they will sustain their burn. The boaters that are manning these craft will again start to row or kayak or move down the river.”

(Above) A photo released by Redmoon in May showing a fire buoy being tested.

It will be “a highly choreographed event,” says Balestrieri, with fire spinners and circus performers on both sides of the river.

With as many as 150 canoes, kayaks, and other watercraft lit up, the Chicago Children’s Choir will float by on a platform. And then the steamship arrives.

A 24-foot pontoon boat driven by a 35-horsepower engine will be made up to look like a 19th century steam-powered paddle wheeler.

“This will be the bringer of doom and the foreboding and fire that will burn down the city.” says Balestrieri (right). “It will pass between each of the not-yet-lit platforms and set them on fire and then beat a hasty retreat.”

Representing pre-1870s iconic Chicago structures, the platforms will burn until the inner workings of each building is revealed.

The structures will be ignited “in a very safe and controlled fashion” and then “doused in a very controlled fashion through the use of smoke and water and mist.”

Projected onto the mist will be photographs collected this summer from different neighborhoods.

“This final moment that you’re left with is this really beautiful and literal reflection of contemporary Chicago. The remnant of what the event is trying to point to is that this was an artistic moment that was made by Chicago today that reflects contemporary Chicago and Chicagoans.”

The children’s choir will then wrap up the event.

The river will be closed to traffic during the performance but open most of the day. If it rains or is too windy, they will try again on Sunday, October 5. Handling the gas-powered fire effects will be Pyrotechnico, a fireworks company started in 1889 and now based in Pennsylvania. The company performed fireworks shows for the Super Bowl in 2003 and the 2004 Democratic National Convention. “Our ambition is not to celebrate the destruction of the fire but to celebrate the way that it allowed for Chicago to show its grit, greatness, and ultimately for the city to renew itself,” says Rugg. She is hoping the festival becomes to Chicago what Mardi Gras is to New Orleans. (Left) A fire spinner. Photo by Robert Engberg.

“That’s an audacious, egotistical, and crazy idea but that’s what we’re out to invent.”