Adding messages to defined tag

Hi,

Is there a way to add properties to a tag after having stored it in a local variable. For example i'm trying to do this

   renderContentOn: html
   |input|
   input:= html textInput.
   input class: 'some-class'.

But it didn't work. I also tried writing to the input's canvas, but that is not publicly accessible.

I'm trying this because i'd like to reuse a few properties across many tags without subclassing.