Ready Steady Yeti Go (Into the Archives)

I'm also a fan of Memento.

I'm also a fan of Memento.

As someone who's been involved in theatre for exactly half their life (granted I'm only 20, but, hey, who's counting? Me, clearly, I just...gave you a figure...what were we talking about?) I know that the end of the show run is bittersweet. On one hand, the play is over, and that's objectively sad. On the other hand, it's a time to look back and be proud of the hours of work that was put into it. And for exactly that nostalgic reason, I don't believe in throwing stuff away. Re-purpose? Of course. Shove in the back of a closet? Been there, done that. Proudly display in plain sight even when your mom told you you had to "choose which pieces of Disney Cars merchandise you're taking to your new place"? Not relatable, but, I'm sure somebody's gone through it. Point is, I'm a fan of mementos, and so is Azuka. Here's some stuff lying around the office right now from YETI that I hope will be sticking around as a reminder of this amazing show.

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Stacks o' programs (I took the liberty of highlighting the most important part.) Behind the scenes: there was recently office talk of creating reusable program templates. Would certainly make ol' Captain Planet tip his hat to us. Do you collect programs from shows you see? Yeah, well...we collect programs from shows we make. So. Take that...Mom.

Lightning McQueen is awesome.

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Lobby notebooks! We encouraged patrons to share their thoughts in these six notebooks relating to the show and its themes; these prompts were actually born in the first YETI rehearsal, which I was thankful to get to be at! Personally I think this is a really neat idea for audience engagement at theaters. For me being 12 felt like thinking I was the shit for knowing that Zeus cheated on his wife a lot. Dude, that's like the one thing everyone know about Greek mythology. Also everyone in your class is learning the exact same thingWhy is this so cool for you?

Didn't get a chance to share in one of the notebooks? Leave a comment.

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Signs, sandwich boards, head shots, oh my! I loved the choice to go with a kind of awkward year book photo aesthetic for the YETI marketing. It fits the show so well. 

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Goodbye tennis balls :( While the annual Azuka Theatre Collective Tennis Tournament is never our most popular event, it's tradition and I personally don't want it going away any time soon. These tennis balls, however, were tossed around by the kids in YETI, including during the last scene where they ruminate about what their (and Levar Burton's) futures may hold. Where did that spectacular Levar Burton mural go, by the way? I'm not sure. If anything is being thrown away from the show, it certainly will not be that. Our fundraising is over once we sell that puppy to the art museum.

Another pivotal prop from the show is Carly's xylophone. Fun fact: some of the keys are actually screwed in, so that when Goon flips it over, they don't all fall out. This poor instrument; Frank Nardi put it through a lot over the past few weeks.

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Finally -- the Azuka tradition of a poster signed by members of cast & crew. This will definitely be sticking around for the long haul. Even after ten years on and behind the stage I am still blown away by the hard work that theatre folks put into their craft.

Farewell, YETI. We'll be reminded of you often!

- Lucas