Polaroid Stories is a play dealing with drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, and homelessness, but the real overriding theme is escaping. The characters find different ways to escape their reality and in many ways their very problems are the result of these escapist thought processes. Skinhead Boy says that he is running, and wants to run so fast that no one will catch him, and that is a metaphor for the play as a whole.
Orpheus appears as an African-American male in his twenties. No discernible physical characteristics. Orpheus is homeless or between homes in a city that is never particularly mentioned as far as by name. But he lives in this city amongst other drug addicted youths. Economically speaking Orpheus has little to no money. At different points in the play he professes his love to Eurydice. At the same time, he also claims to love Persephone.
Orpheus believes that he himself is love-worthy and capable of loving others, despite his alcohol/drug addictions. Yet most of the characters (Persephone/Eurydice) find Orpheus to be a joke, or something to take advantage of. His basic desire is to escape, as is the case with all the characters, but he attempts to do this through love or being in love. There seems to be a drive to get lost in love because in doing so he can escape realiy The obstacles to this is his very reality, a reality that the women available are junkies and prostituities, and do not share his views about the existence of love. Further, he mistakes being in love with sexual intimacy, further skewing his vision of reality.
Persephone is another character in her 20's with no distinct traits. She lives in the same area of the city that Orpheus does; a run down slum home to homeless and drug abusers. She is a prostituite in this area. Orpheus is one of her johns. Persephone thinks of herself as cold, and is very confrontational. She carries guilt for putting up her baby for adoption but will not admit to it completely, though she does admit to wondering what the baby looks like.