Mobile - The Making and the Intentions

Mobile achieves the goals of The Paper Bird’s theatre making in many ways. For one, the audience is on the stage for the whole performance since the show is set inside a mobile home. There are also numerous examples of verbatim: tv interviews, personal interviews broadcasted through household items, an astronomy book, and others. Each of the personal interviews also connects to one of the show’s clearest uses of symbolism where people assign themselves as household objects. It allows each person to develop as a unique character with functions such as microwave beeping to censor swears, the choice of words to appear on the alarm clock and more. All of these items, though, eventually become “novelties” to people from the outside, members of the audience included. Catherine as well is drawn to these items and has her own moments where the vehicle’s projector helps display her scattered thoughts with a series of quickly flashing images. Even the song she chooses to play, Hotel California, is intended to invoke the idea of traveling somewhere but not truly leaving. Just as space tries to pull a rocket back to Earth, Catherine feels that her childhood and class status keep her in two different worlds — an inside and an outside that develop from great but unexpected opportunities.