Nothing Wicked About This — How The Woodlands’ Own Scenery Bags Turns Broadway Trash Into Repurposed Treasures

Thirteen hundred and sixty five pounds of backdrops from the musical Hamilton are piled on the floor in Scenery Bags’ offices in The Woodlands, along with step-and-repeats from the Tony awards.

“This is from the (Hamilton) Angelica tour, the first national tour,” Scenery Bags CEO and founder Jennifer Kahn points out. “So that was the first (Hamilton) tour to retire soft goods. These are from past Tony Awards, they just cleaned out their offices and called us and asked us if we wanted some things. Yes, thank you.”

Scenery Bags, headquartered in The Woodlands, is the brainchild of Kahn, a theatre veteran with 17 years of stage management experience on both coasts. She’s found a way to repurpose and upcycle theatrical waste and give it new life, turning backdrops, stage floors, costumes and vinyl into handbags, jewelry and keychains.

All those pounds of Hamilton backdrops?

“Everything that we have would have been in a landfill,” Kahn says. “We work very hard to make sure that if there’s still life in a drop or and if the production is OK with it, that it is repurposed somewhere else. We’ve brokered some trades for other theaters and that kind of thing, but oftentimes it’s stuff that’s licensed that they don’t want reused by someone.

“Like a show curtain that’s very iconic to a piece, or costumes. So those, instead of getting thrown away, they now have an outlet and an option to send it to us.”

While stage managing on Broadway, Kahn and her sister had a blog that initially focused on decor, but morphed into giving back and ethical style.

“I loved getting to champion these companies that were being eco friendly about how they were manufacturing with a giveback component and meeting all these friends in that industry, while also stage managing,” Kahn tells PaperCity The Woodlands. “And it was kind of how I balanced these like two pieces of my heart that I really thought had nothing to do with each other.”

Kahn worked for 17 years in California and on Broadway, but a road trip to Maine with a friend had her singing a new tune.

“In Maine, there were all these amazing artisan shops,” she recalls. “And they had one that was called Sea bags, and it was upcycled sailboat sales. We went there and I met everyone who worked there. I bought a bag, and at lunch after that, my friend Laura and I were like ‘Where’s our idea?’

“And I immediately thought about drops, because it’s just a giant piece of fabric that often gets thrown away when a show closes. That night, I called my friend Brian, who rents national tour sets and Broadway sets regionally. So he has a whole company that acquires a show after it finishes touring or closes on Broadway and isn’t going to tour, and then pares them down to rent regionally.

“And I told him about my idea, and he’s like, I have 600 pounds of curtains for you. I don’t throw anything away.”

Juggling With Scenery Bags

Kahn was on maternity leave with her first child when Scenery Bags launched in 2017.

“I was home, and I was nursing or rocking (my son) Hudson with one hand and typing on the other and on the phone,” she says. “It all just kind of happened at the same time that our samples were done from our manufacturer, and I put them on Instagram. I knew this was supposed to just be a maternity leave project that I thought: ‘This is fun, and it’s everything that I care about.’

“But I don’t know if anyone else will think theater trash is interesting.”

Then the first drop of 25 bags sold out in 48 hours.

“The first set of bags, we cut two drops,” Kahn says. “Our first two drops were the Madison Square Garden’s Wizard of Oz, and then a drop from an operetta called Desert Song, which no one’s ever heard of. But it was, to this day, one of the most beautiful drops we’ve ever had.”

One of those bags found their way to Krysta Rodriguez, who was in the Spring Awakenings show that Kahn had stage managed.  She put the bag on her Instagram story, and Scenery Bags’ followers grew by 1,000 overnight.

A 2017  Upworthy feature on Scenery Bags brought the attention to new levels, and the story was picked up by Broadway World and Playbill.com, and those two articles also brought more notice to Scenery Bags.

“We sold 4,000 pre-orders within 48 hours, and by the end of the month, we had 5,000 pre orders,” Kahn says. “So all of a sudden this was a real company.”

Giving Back With Broadway

The giving back element for Scenery Bags is important to Kahn. Early on, Kahn latched onto the Theatre Development Fund. Ten percent of Scenery Bags’ proceeds are donated to TDF.

“We started by funding their Intro to Theater program, which they go into schools of under resourced communities, teach them about theater and then bring them to see what is, many times, their first live theatrical performance,” Kahn says. “I knew when I started Scenery Bags, I wanted there to be a giveback component.

“I wanted it to be about accessibility for new generations to find theater.”

Seven years after starting, with 34,000 pounds of repurposed theatrical waste and 2,000 students sponsored in the TDF program, Kahn marvels at how far Scenery Bags has come.

“The ripple effect of what has become of this company is so much greater than I had ever intended. And I’m so grateful that I get to be a part of this machine that is now doing so much good for the theatrical community,” she says. “With rescuing and decreasing the theatrical waste footprint and introducing a new generation that may not have been introduced to theater.”

And there’s no telling what’s next.

“We’re going to kind of open the umbrella a little bit wider and see how much more waste we can kind of take in and from other entertainment entities,” Kahn says.

In some ways, Scenery Bags is still just taking the stage.