Assignment/Activity Title Inspirations Play

Year Freshman
Skill
Public Performance, Group DynamicsPortfolio Category
Social Awareness
In the process of brainstorming and writing our script for the Inspirations play I assumed the role
of leadership. As I assumed this status I found myself continuously telling my group to focus and how we
should go about brainstorming and deciding what happened next in the play. In general we would share
our ideas in the group and see which one we liked the most based on; interest in the topic, hilarity of
possible scenarios, and how we could fit our 6-person group into a script surrounding the topic. We finally
decided on the broad topic of NASA. We agreed on the subject because we knew it would be relatively
easy to incorporate the 6 of us as astronauts, scientists, or professors. I then explained to the group that we
needed to narrow down the subject of NASA so we could focus on something in the 10 minutes of stage
time that we had. This was where things got dicey.
It took us almost an entire class to decide on the theme of whether NASAs funding was sufficient
or if we should stop or diminish the funding that goes to NASA. Almost every person in the group wanted
to perform the play on a different aspect of NASA. One thing we could agree on was the play had to
incorporate space exploration. As the leader of the group I took it upon myself to get our group past this
stage of preproduction. I sacrificed my idea so that we had at least one person to second an idea. However
before I could go with one idea, another person in my group gave up their idea. At this point we were left
with four ideas and two unbiased voters. I explained that we had to limit the options to two. We finally
eliminated the other options and voted on the funding option.
The next class we had the task of starting, the most difficult part of scriptwriting. I knew if we
didnt have some outline of a plot there was no way we could just start writing, so I explained to the
group that we had to brainstorm the general plot. There was less disagreement on this aspect and I led the
group through it in one class. We spent the next week debating what to say and when to incorporate
information we got from interviews with NASA employees. This portion of the process required the least
supervision, each group member participated in equal amounts. From a leaders perspective starting the
script was surprisingly not the hardest part, I found getting an original idea for our script was the most
difficult. I had to organize everyone and choose between many applicable ideas based on an array of
categories.
Unfortunately the fact that we will perform the play in front of the class biased my decisions throughout
the process. I, along with the majority of my group, would rather not perform the play. If a scene that was
considered embarrassing was put forth and it was not necessary to the plot, I would speak for the majority
and shoot it down. This weeding out changed the course of our play, not making it any better or worse. If
we were more comfortable on stage our play wouldve turned out a significantly different way.

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