Vintage Schlitz

People who work in theatre tend to collect souvenirs from the shows that they work on. Maybe it’s because the work we do is temporary; you do a show, it runs for a couple months, then it gets torn down, never to be seen again with nothing left of it but a few photos.

As a lighting designer this is especially true - with the flip of a switch what I create ceases to exist. So I suppose it’s no big surprise that at AHT my office is even more chock full of mementos of past productions than anyone else’s. A sheet of “Starbarks Coffee” labels from A Dog’s Life; a “No Ned” banner from Fully Committed; a broken bass string from Swing!; an angel feather from Duck Hunter Shoots Angel; a mini-frisbee from Godspell; Heidi’s snow angel gobo from Nuncrackers; a particularly racy “UB the Critic” slip from the first run of Menopause the Musical; a computer printout of lighting ideas for Smokey Joe’s Cafe; an autumn leaf given to my by director Linda Ade’s then 5 year old daughter on opening night of Uh Oh, Here Comes Christmas; cast photos, company Christmas cards, bits of set models, notes from actors and directors, my walls are forests of pushpins holding up snips and scraps of the shows I’ve worked on.

Back in 1994 AHT did a musical called The Clouds of Highway 40. I had just taken over the job of tech director from Tom Defeo, who was leaving the theatre to begin a teaching career. As I recall, Tom did the sound design for the show. This memory is a little hazy, but what is certain is that somebody in the company gave everyone a can of Schlitz as a tongue in cheek opening night gift.

One of those cans was never opened. It got set on a shelf in my office as a souvenir of the show. And it sat there.

I left my job at AHT, and a succession of tech directors occupied the office over the course of about 4 years; then I returned to the job, and the can of Schlitz was still sitting on the shelf.

Right. So during tech for I Love You Because, I was rooting around trying to find a stray piece of equipment and I knocked the can of Schlitz off of the high shelf it was sitting on. It hit the corner of a file cabinet and exploded, showering my entire office with 14 year old beer. As it turns out, it was still fizzy; however I can also now state without equivocation that Shlitz does not age well, not at all.

My crew for changeover showed up just in time to find me standing in my office with a roll of paper towels, stinking of stale beer. It took about three days for the smell to go away.

Of course I couldn’t throw out the can. How could I let go of something with that much history?

Geez, I gotta’ clean up this office....