Character Analysis

Show: Variations

Character: Alice Ensemble (Scene 7)

Age: 13

Siblings: Dan, Lucas, Jasmine, Pearl

Parents: Dad, Mum (Shelly)

In our show Variations I don’t have a role as such but I am part of the Alice ensemble, which means I
am part of 7 other people and together with our director have made the decision we should all
represent parts of the main character Alice from different universes. There’s no words within the
script for the Alice ensemble as it again was the director’s decision to create an ensemble, however
since we are supposed to be parts of a character we can take a lot from the main character of Alice
to figure out who we are. When the Alice ensemble come together we figured out that we can all
come from one of the many universes we see Alice go to and that can be the universe we’re from. So
for me I am the Alice from scene 7, this means my character has 4 siblings and 3 more on the way.
More things we can tell about the Alice I am from the script is that she’s much more confident as
well as very fed up since she already has so many siblings. Because we only have bits and pieces of
information for what this Alice’s life would be, I’m taking it and using is for other scenes when I’m on
the side or present so my reaction to things is a little different to the others within the Alice
ensemble.

Never the less, the main way to understand how we should act as Alices is just understanding who
Alice is and that is simply, a 13 year-old girl from 2018, she is the youngest sibling, her parents are
divorced and probably is a lower class family. We can take all this information from the script when
it says that their mum has had to go to work early and works late hours, and also the note the mum
leaves on the fridge about her dad and his new girlfriend, which is all made known within the first
scene and reiterated again in each scene. We also know that her mum, Shelly, was brought up in an
even more poorer household growing up and again didn’t really have much of a father figure there
either as it is never mentioned in scene 6 where we go back to the 80’s and see her childhood.
There’s this idea that everything has almost gone full circle and that maybe why Alice’s parents
aren’t together anymore. With all this information we can tell that Alice lives in a household with a
lot of tension and being the youngest has probably been thrown into the deep end of all of it, this
making her a resilient character but has no healthy or positive relationships in her life to base any of
hers on, which is probably when she lets the character Chloe be mean to her. So at the end saying
the line to Chloe, ‘be nicer to people’, in scene 7, really show how much she’s learnt and how much
development she’s done throughout the show. Meaning being in the Alice ensemble I need to take
elements of this and place it into my character.

So, another way I have had to develop my character is take in the actual the time period of 2018 and
what was important then and how it would have effected someone who was 13 and in school. The
main key thing, which is repeated throughout the script anyway is about phones and being in this
very digital age were social media is very prominent and since she’s 13 it means she’s at the age
where she allowed it have all these apps and as she says in scene 1 taking a phone is like taking
someone’s life, shows how big effect the digital age has on her, and how much reliability she has on
her phone. This also probably means as a character follows a lot of people online and is highly
influenced by them as well.

The whole character of Alice is about her finding herself because she in a teenager and doesn’t know
lots about the world yet. So, as the Alice ensemble my character is basically the same as that but a
slightly different version, but overall a lost teenage girl who wants to find her way but doesn’t
exactly know the best way to do it.