Darks Stories and Unique Characters
Every character has its own dark background and its own unique characterisation. Another element that binds the characters at the record shop is that they all have different kinds of dark pasts. Daisy lost his boyfriend and only thing left from him is the record shop. For that reason she doesn`t want to leave the shop. Tiff lost her parents when she was little. She is also homeless.
Alex and Jasmine can only exist with their culture in the record shop. Jasmine is a so called writer and Alex is an unsuccessful musician. Alex has a band called Punch the Llama. . Both characters are making fun of with stereotypes. Jasmine wants to become a well-known and rich author. Alex wants to follow his uncle’s way and become “the new big thing”. Jasmine steals other character’s stories for her book. Because she has nothing else to write. She doesn`t even know her own story. She only writes stories about the record shop. She doesn’t write anything about the real world. The real world doesn’t know her existence. Alex is not only a mediocre musician or does not have a peculiar style, but she has her own ways to cope with capitalism, similar to her band`s name.
“ALEX. It’s not about animal cruelty. The llama is symbolic of the oppressiveness of society. You have the head, and then the long neck, then the body. The head is the establishment and government, and the body is everyone else. The classes are separated by the neck, that’s the hierarchy. We punch the llama to bring the establishment down.”
(Jack Briggs, 2017)
Yet Jasmine did not explore her own history she writes about the other`s dark pasts. Besides she underestimates everybody and in from a wealthy family, she is as hopeless as Alex. Also at the “Dawn of the Hipster” scene, the two characters start to understand each other and begin to have a sort of master- slave relationship.
“JASMINE. I have this. It’s about Tiff. (Starts reading) My mum and dad died in a car crash when I was five. I don’t remember it well, but I remember their faces. They’re just like photographs in my head. She’s always smiling, and his eyes are made larger by his glasses. I wish I knew them better.
ALEX. Did she actually say that?
JASMINE. She did. It’s beautiful.”
(Jack Briggs, 2017)
As Sebastian tires to find his own self throughout the play, he also has dilemmas about sexuality. As he likes David along the play he starts to like Violet at the end of the play. When he leaves the record shop to work in the real capitalist world nobody wants him in the shop. He has to choose. The society or the outsiders. Despite the fact that Sebastian is the one that character who is not liked and the one that frames up to his friends, he becomes the one to save the record shop. That is to say, instead of trying to survive in the capitalist system, he retires into the world`s isolated shell and prefers not to exist.
“SEBASTIAN. We can stay! I fucked with the blueprints.”
(Jack Briggs, 2017)
Violet being and alcoholic and dropped off studying about philosophy, is an important character that emphasizes to the zilch circulation by just speaking but practicing any act throughout the play.
“DAISY. Maybe if you stop drinking all of this, you’ll be successful.
VIOLET. I am successful.
DAISY. Is this why you dropped out of university?
VIOLET. Wine can’t make you drop out of university! Wine makes university bearable!”
(Jack Briggs, 2017)
In spite of the fact that the love between David and Sherice seems romantic at record shop, it does not actually exist in the real world.
“SHERICE. I got a discount at Burger King. That could be nice.

(Jack Briggs, 2017)
As a result even if the characters have dark sides they cannot across the border of circulation and timelessness.

Work Cited:
Briggs, J. (2017) Record ’97. Lincoln

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