Teams

My first curiosity about this project was the other participants. Who were the 14 people I would work with? Unfortunately, the same person who invited me to the project had sealed lips. Of course, not everyone's lips were as sealed and at Fantasticks rehearsals on Wednesday night I got a few tidbits about who was joining the group from some people who had also been invited. Still, I had to wait a few more days to find out the rest of the cast:

Meghan, Aaron, Amelia, Shelby, Julie, Aiden, Rebecca, Michael, Dale, Laura, True, Jennifer, Brendan, Justin and Mike.

To save space, time, and add a little bit of privacy I am only using first names. However, you can find full details about the project and the cast here!

Of the 14 other people in the project I have worked with 12 of them; I have not had a chance to work with Shelby or Aiden. Among those I know there is not a single person I wouldn't want on my team. As a group they are incredibly talented, creative, and dedicated. I could think of more adjectives to describe the cast, but suffice it to say I am well pleased and excited to work with all of them. Which is good because they are all my teammates. It took me a couple of days to recognize that fact.

For some reason my initial impression was that this was a competition even though, to my knowledge, the word competition has not appeared in any official project communications. I was picturing three teams trying to outdo each other as they created their one-act plays. But I am slowly realizing that this is not a competition. The other teams will be collaborators, not competitors. If a team does horribly the entire show suffers as a result. All three teams need to succeed if the show is to be a success. We are one team creating three parts of a whole show, not three teams working against each other to create three shows.

With that in mind, I still wonder who I will be privileged to work with because we don't know the teams! We are going to be divided into three teams of five in the first moments of the project. This prevents working ahead of time. No cheating. It truly needs to be 24-hours from conception to performance. However, I can still guess at the teams and there is a clue. Organizers have admitted that Amelia, Aiden, and True (the youngest cast members) will be on separate teams.

I think there are two possibilites. First, Amelia, Aiden, and True will be team "captains" and select from the remaining 12 participants to complete their teams. I really hope that is not the case because I have anxiety about being the last one picked. It's like elementary school all over again, and junior high. And high school. (Please! No!)

However, I think the more likely scenario is that the organizers are looking over the cast and carefully selecting balanced teams. The organizers have worked with all 15 cast members, often in multiple shows. They are familiar with cast members strengths and weaknesses. This should allow them to make balanced teams able to create a good end product.

Based off of that idea, here is how I have balanced the teams based off of my knowledge of the cast and a lot of guess work. I divided the team into five groups of three: Amelia, Aiden, True (given); Meghan, Shelby, Julie; Laura, Jennifer, Rebecca; Brendan, Aaron, Justin; Michael, Mike, Dale. Why these groupings? Well, there's a little rhyme and reason but not much. First off, it puts women and men into different categories so that each team will have at least two women (with Amelia's team getting three). I know that men can play women, women can play men, and that some people think people's maleness/femaleness doesn't matter, but it still is nice to have gender variety in the group. The divisions within men and women were far more random, with me trying to pair up experience into groups, but ending up being my best guesses. For example, Michael & Mike are two of the oldest participants and I reasoned that they might be separated to give multiple groups the benefit of that experience. Am I suggesting that Dale is old? Absolutely not. I just needed to fill in the third member of that group.

Then what? Take one member from each group and you have a team. Unfortunately, mathematical theory results in 243 different ways to divide up those sets into three teams. So do I have any idea what the teams will be? Absolutely not. Have I thought about which team would be amazing to watch? Yes, I have. In fact, if I wanted to have one group of five that would give me the biggest bang for my buck I know who I would put on it. Am I going to tell you? No, I'm not.

However, I would like feedback from people reading the blog. If you know the players (or even if you don't) what teams would you like to see? How do you think they will be divided up? Answer in the comments!