Record 97’ has two opposite themes.
First I came up with the “home and prison” metaphor. This metaphor gave the shape to the play. The record shop is home to every character. The characters have nowhere else to go other than the record shop. In other words Record ‘97’s characters have no place in modern capitalist society. They are the outsiders. They don’t have important jobs our roles in society. They also do nothing for finding themselves a place in that world. This means they don’t exist in modern capitalist society. The Record shop is the only place where they can be themselves, where they can be exist.
The characters mostly spend their time in the shop and socialise with other characters. They have their own little community apart from everything else. They have music, records, posters, books, wines for this little isolated world.
Is that their own choice to live in this shop or they have to live here because they have nowhere else to go? This was my question to start my dramaturgy journey. Because I wanted to create an ambiguous atmosphere for the retaliation between the shop and the characters. The record shop can also be a prison for all the characters. They stuck in this record shop. They can’t escape from the shop or they can’t have a life out of the shop. Through the play all characters are trying the save the shop from the construction but also they are trying to find new possibilities for their life’s.
Inspiration from Waiting for Godot
“Let’s go.” “We can’t.” “Why not?” “We’re waiting for Godot.”
(Samuel Beckett, 1948)
Apart from this home-prison dilemma our play also needed another theme which could make Record ’97 more ambiguous. For ambiguousness I got this inspiration from Waiting for Godot. The characters in Waiting for Godot are waiting somebody who has never come. They don’t move our do something for their existence. Like Waiting for Godot`s characters our characters also have no aim in their life. They are also part of an endless repetition in the record shop. Not only the vinyl’s are circular but also their time spent in the record shop.

“SEBASTIAN. There’s nothing wrong with innovation. We’ve got to keep up with the times.
VIOLET. No we don’t. Time is just an endless repetition. It’s not about the aesthetic, it’s about the people. People don’t change. This place was going to be destroyed sooner or later, because some person will always want to make their mark, or fill their pocket. That’s what history is.”
(Jack Briggs, 2017)

Works Cited
Beckett, Samuel (1948) Waiting for Godot. Paris
Briggs, J. (2017) Record ’97. Lincoln