Theater Lab 1

In the lab on friday, the items we touched mainly brought up auditory experiences for me. The envelope with paper was crisp and crinkly. It was reminicent of offices and corporate America. It was smooth and generic, but had sharp corners that worried me because without my sight they could cut me. The smooth paper and envelope can represent the generic, often pointless corporate world, whose different companies and business people are often indistinguishable from all the other smooth pieces of paper. The sharp corners can symbolize the harshness of the business world that lays off masses of people.

However, a crisp letter can be full of positive possibilities; letters from loved ones, a check from one's parents, a birthday card. I guess what a letter can really symbolize is that you can't really know what's in it until you open it. The open letter we explored on Friday was evidence of secret it once held, like the college acceptance/rejection letters we freshmen received this last spring.

The stuffed animal was more simplistic to me. It was soft and cuddly; it was pure childhood. The stuffed animal could have been a child's security against the monsters of the night or its favorite companion that the child takes everywhere. When handled by an adult, the stuffed animal conveys love for the stuffed animal's child-owner or perhaps if the stuffed animal belongs to that adult, it conveys that person's childhood and their continued attachment to those memories.

The moment that I touched the baby shoes, images flooded my mind: my baby shoes, doll shoes, every baby's first pair of shoes that represent their first physical foray into the adult world of walking. A baby's first pair of shoes represent achievement of beginning to walk , as well as implying all the places they have yet to go. The shoes felt small and leather and smelled new. The funny thing with baby shoes is that every parent holds their child's as distinctive, filled with the memories of their baby's first steps, and yet in feeling that baby shoes, I could have been feeling any baby's shoe in the world.

All these items brought particular memories to my mind, just as in plays, they can bring particular memories to each audience member's mind. I think that these symbols can help the audience connect to the characters' stories by making the character's emotions more general so audience members can empathize.