Character Analysis: Red Light Alley

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Title of piece: Red Light Alley
Option 3: Improvisation
Theme: Homeless youth
Genre: Gritty realism/tragedy

My class and I devised a play based on a research project about homeless teenage runaways. The storyline is about a group of homeless teenage girls living in extreme conditions in a rough and dangerous environment. A new girl arrives in the alley in which they reside from a wealthy and comfortable background, however she has been forced out of the house by her parents who can no longer support her due to her reckless behaviour, so to teach her a lesson they pushed her onto the streets to see if she could survive on her own. After being mugged, she stumbles accross the girls who provide her with shelter and protection for the night. …show more content…

Our target was mature audiences, due to some content of the play being explicit and gritty. I played the role of Dreamer, a homeless young drug addict who due to unfortunate circumstances was pushed into a life of reliance and addiction to substances. In my portrayal of the character of Dreamer, I had to adapt my personality to the role I was playing, and doing so I had to work on many aspects of my regular self. To give the impression to the audience that I was under the influence, I had to make my tone of voice more high pitched and slur my words as well as changing my gait to an unsteady, arbitrary stance at all times. Silences were essential to my characterization as it gave the impression that I was fading in and out of reality, which is why I employed this technique mid sentence so as to make it seem as if I was unable to keep track of my own thoughts. My facial expressions had to appear spaced out and intoxicated, therefore I made sure to not concentrate on a certain thing for long periods of time, as well as rolling my eyes on occasion, as well as avoiding direct eye contact with all members of the cast, so as to seem afraid and confused. I also had to adapt my posture to the character, and to …show more content…

In fact 2 weeks into our performance preparation time, I took it upon myself to change characters with another member of our group, who was struggling to get into character with her role at the time. At first this caused me great difficulty due to having to learn a whole new set of lines as well as changing to an entirely new character with a completely different story, however I was able to perfect it after a week or so. I believe I was able to adapt to my character with relative ease due to the amount of research I did on the topic. I also watched movies such as “Trainspotting” to help me really identify with the mentality of a drug addict. For example in my line “what a happy life right?”, I employed a rhetorical question to create dramatic irony, as the audience could clearly see that my life was precisely the opposite. Also in the scene of the confrontation between Slash and Jo, I run frantically into the corner with my prop joint, and smoke it at a rapidly increased speed, as well as making sure that my hands were as shaky and terrified as possible, as well as assuring my facial expression was that of confused fear. I believe my most succesful moment onstage was the scene in which my character kills herself, as the acapella performance of Roxanne induced heartache to the audience.. When I sang the lyric “you don’t care if it’s wrong or if it’s right” I made sure that my

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