Final Reflection

1.     Undertaken new challenges AND Developed new skills

In the last two years I undertook so many new challenges. I ran an executive planning committee. I received new certifications in diving. I started doing lighting board board operation. I played basketball for the first time in years at an adult level. I taught little kids chess, or attempted to at least. There was very little I did in these last two years that was not knew to me. I did not fall in love with everything I did but it felt really good to go out and stretch my comfort zone. In particular, the planning of COMUN was particularly new for me as in the past I have avoided any thing related to group projects or large groups of people. I have good people skills but the constant balancing of the interpersonal and the actual project tired me out. In the end I deeply enjoyed my work with COMUN and I met some wonderful people, but I am not sure I would want to be in charge of such an organization again. I preferred my work on lighting for the school, the perfection of technical skill rather than the wrangling of people. If I am ever going to step into that role again I will need to drastically improve my people skills and my ability to organize a large team. But then again I did not have either of these skills at all at the beginning of the year so going form not having them to needing to develop them further is a big step for me.  On the other hand, I fell so in love with lighting design that I am going to school for it next year. I love the feeling of working as part of a smaller team with a more focused scope. I loved the development of my technical knowledge and skills in regard to lighting particularly my new skill of board programming.

2.     Planed and Initiated activities

This was perhaps the easiest of of the outcomes to check off my list, but also in some ways one of the hardest. For the last two years I served on the Executive committee of Colombo Model United Nations. In doing this I planned 2 three day conferences, chaired committees, and worked to plan meetings and events. Almost every free minute I had went into those events. I also worked as head of lighting on 6 OSC events. Now I was not necessarily planning the actual rehearsal time but I was responsible for selecting my spot operators, dictating their schedule, making time for us to meet outside of class and so on. In this way I easily checked this out come off my list.

However, I had not anticipated just how hard it was to be in charge of things. Nor had I anticipated how many small things needed to be thought of in planning anything even just a lighting department meet up. It really pushed the edges of my time management and organizational abilities. While I fulfilled my requirement almost immediately to see each project through to the end was a struggle. I am glad I did, nothing quite feels like sitting down at the end of an even and thinking “I did this”.

                                                                                                    

3.     Worded Collaboratively with others

One of the most interesting things I did this year was the lighting for Bugsy Malone and for Arabian Nights. Both of these required me to work not only with the actors and the respective directors to create the pieces of theatre but also with the sound technicians and my follow spot operators. Every effect had to be coordinated carefully. It was a sort of technical skill that I had no tried before but that I loved. The careful coordination of a small group of people really appeals to my skill set of being calm in a crisis or in this case a play which is really just one on going crisis.

I also worked collaboratively with others on the other end of the scale. The COMUN executive committee was 30 people. That really strained my ability to organize but it was also really wonderful. It was cool to get to know and work with people whose skill sets are nowhere near my own. I definitely struggled with my social stamina on this. Being used to spending a lot of my time alone the sort of constant contact I needed for the executive committee to be a success really drained me. If I am to do that sort of thing again I need to learn how to better balance my life. But as I said the work was wonderful I particularly enjoyed working with the various chairs learning about their various areas of specialization and interest.

I also worked collaboratively with my service this year, Checkmates, to create a learning environment for the children we taught. This was really fun and it was nice working and exploring how we balanced our various strengths. Sadira could speak Sinhala capability but I was the better player so we often teamed up, with me playing the little kids and Sadira explaining my moves to them so that we could teach tem. It was very much not what I would have pictured my self doing but it was really fun.

4.     Shown Perseverance and commitment

Over the course of the last two years I have dedicated more than 300 hours to MUN and a less but comparable number of hours to school theatre. Every project that I completed with the school I gave my full dedication to, because I love MUN and I love theatre and lighting and because I know the importance of giving back to the community. It was hard and there were definitely moment when I wished I could have stepped back a bit or a lot. But I also believe in the importance of honoring commitments. Looking, back there were moments in both when I thought I could have given a little more but I definitely did not believe so at the time. Showing perseverance means showing up at 5:30 AM 3 days in a row to get a conference set up and and perseverance means staying after school till six or seven or 8 to program the lighting board and to watch rehearsal and take notes. I also have taken responsibility for my actions and mess ups. I know there were times when my actions could have prevented something’s and even when there wasn’t anything I could do I tried to take responsibility. The COMUN conference definitely didn’t go off with out a hitch but I think I listened to criticism and attempted to fix things in a responsible way.

5.     Engaged with Issues of Global importance

COMUN and Service were my primary methods of meeting this requirement. In COMUN we focused this year’s work around sustainable governance and last year’s work around the idea of global deadlock. In both cases we were working towards an understanding of what responsible government looked like. In the first case the executive committee wanted to focus the work of the student towards an idea of understanding where global dead lock comes form (for example cultural clashes or ideological ones) and then from that understanding towards an idea of what cam be done to stop it (I.E. compromise, cross cultural and international communication, the end of stigmatization for many issues). In the case of this year’s conference we wanted to create a conference that looked at what long term sustainability looks like. I definitely feel that there is often a focus on how we can end this or that crisis rather than a focus on how we can set up patterns of sustainability that will prevent the next one. In COMUN we wanted people to talk about not only the ways singular people can have effects, such as services, but also what needs to happen on a global scale in order to curb the need for individual services.

In service this year we wanted to teach kids chess, but not only that. We also wanted to teach the kids how to teach others and to allow them to ask us questions and to feel comfortable with us. In short we wanted to build relationships with them that would allow them to have more opportunities. I think this is important because no matter what there is still a big gap of communication between underprivileged communities and privileged ones. It was important to us, and me in particular, that we created an environment of service that was geared towards intercommunity communication rather than just going in and doing things with out knowing the community. There was a lot of room for improvement in our service and I’m sure we could have done, and will be doing more next year, more but I am proud of the fact that by the end of of the year the students who had been shy and scared at first we happily joking with me and also beating me in chess.

6.     Explored the Ethical implications of my actions

In COMUN especially this was important because even though we were not actually enacting our plans everything hap to be approved through the security council with takes the safety and scope of all UN operation into consideration. We had to design a program that asked each delegate about the ethical implications of what they were doing. As secretary general it was my job to primarily go around to councils and ask them questions. I found my self particularly interested in asking about the implication of their proposals. How would that affect these people? How would that impact transparency? And so on.

In Scuba diving I also had to evaluate my personal impact. When we go into ecosystems we necessarily effect them even if we don’t intend to. In general I and my scuba diving friends word to be as low impact as possible taking only photos and touching as little as possible, but we still have to do out part to preserve the ecosystems we benefit from.

7.     Increased awareness of my abilities an areas of growth

Over the last year I have definitely learned a lot about my elf and my skill set. There are things like public speaking that I did this year that I did not realize I would be so good at. And there are things that I would not try again with out further improving my skills. I think I have very well highlighted these limitations in my above writing.

Checkmates Service

As the kids we teach progress in their chess skills, the challenges of teaching them change. For instance at the beginning of last semester the challenge was finding a way to communicate to them basic facts about chess, how the pieces moves and how you win. But as their strategy has improved so has the challenge of teaching across language barriers. Now we are attempting to teach them more complicated concepts such as the strategic sacrifices of pieces and the combination of specific piece patterns to your advantage. As we approach the less concrete concepts the language barrier gets harder. Communicating complex concepts in concrete ways is definitely a new challenge. So far the best progress I have made with this has been when I let the more advanced kids play each other and then help them by moving their pieces and pointing out moves. It seems to help them get it if I show them examples of what I'm trying to communicate within games they are playing.

(Me watching 2 of the advanced players playing, and assisting when needed) 

I have been building relationships with the older kids slowly, and have been trying to teach them not just things about chess strategy but about life and competitions . For instance I worked with the girl picture to get her to understand about emotions in chess. I told her that often getting men or better but emotional opponents angry with erratic moves you can win a game. 

I hope that by teaching the kids not just the principles behind chess but also the principles behind teaching we can address the larger global issue of community building and access to educations. By providing underprivileged studnets with the tools to learn to teach through chess that some day they can take what they know, weather it be about chess or not, and teach their fellows therefore expanding access to community education through community outreach. 

Bugsy Malone Lighting

Bugsy Malone was my 6th and final production as head of OSC's lighting department. I started last year doing lighting for the gala concert. It has taken perseverance and commitment to the craft of lighting to get to the point where I could do a two hour show with the skill and competence that I was able to manage for this production. When I started last year I was a single person at the lighting board doing minimal lighting changes that coincided neatly with scene changes. Bugsy Malone features more than 50 changes both major and minor and I was responsible for 2 spot operators and a special effects operator. Split scenes were something new that I had never tired before. In Bugsy there are scenes where Fat Sam is talking on the phone on one side of the stage and other characters come and go from the other side, this meant that I had to adjust my lighting changes both to match the flow of the scene and to make clear the separation between places. I think I succeeded in several instances but had I been designed the set as well as lighting and if I knew what I know now I think i could have made the changes even smoother. I hope to be able to take the skills I learned during Bugsy and improve the lighting I will do in theater during college.

(Final Bow, my lighting design for the cabaret songs. Photo by OSC)

It was a new challenge for me to have to coordinate both lights and cues with other people. I ended up going through the play multiple times with both of my spot operators to ensure that we all knew ever cue.  We had to work collaboratively in oder to make the changes smooth because while they operated where the spot lights were only I could actually turn them on and off. This required absolute coordination so that i never turned light on when they were not focused and so that they never moved the lights erratically while I had them on. The same goes for Virath who was the operator of the strobe in the show. There were multiple moments where I had to turn the lights off just as he turned the strobe on so we had to coordinate cues. My timing still could have used some work but since this was the first time I had ever undertaken the kind of coordination that this required I am quite pleased with the result.

(The Dandy Dan Gang Scene, with the sunlight color of Light I designed evident. Photo by OSC)

Harder than the coordination between operators was the coordination between the director and me. In the past I have played a role closer to junior lighting designer where I took broad instructions such as "many colors during this scene" and then translated them into actual cues and lighting guides. Whereas during this production my role was closer to that of a technical director. I was given very specific things to do and I had to figure out how to do them without limited lighting equipment. I realized during this production that I like technical direction a lot, I frankly really enjoyed do the sort of more practical work, but that I have two many strong opinions on design decisions to ever do this sort of thing long term. 

Attached is a Sample of the Lighting Cue Documentation from Bugsy Malone 

Page	Cue	Action
0	ALK’s Signal	fHouse Lights Down
1	Bugsy Malone is being played	Night Lights up, with moon and stars, Right spot on Roxy
2	Bugsy: ‘Had been well and truly scrambled’ Undertakers Enter	Moon and stars off RS on Roxy, LS undertakers as they enter when LF reaches Roxy RS on Busy
2	Bugsy: “My names Bugsy, Bugsy Malone.”	LS on Singers + RS on Bugsy, Night Off + Lower Wash on
3	End of Song	RS on Bugsy and Fizzy, Left Spot Off
3	Blousy Enters	LF on following Blousy
4	Bugsy: Liveliest Join in Town	Speak Easy + Effects Lights, Both Spots on Dancers
5	Song Ends	Effect Lights Stop
6	Fat Sam: Knuckle dis means trouble.	Black out on stage, LS on paper boy
6	Paper Boy: Read all about it	RS, On radio announcer
7	Radio Announcer: Nice Spot for a….	Speak Easy Lights come on
8	Gang: Nothing Boss. AAAAAH!	Blackout, Front + Stair Lights come on. LS follows Blousy, RS follows
9	Blousey: No Starving.	Restaurant lighting comes on
10	Bugsy: we can’t go on meeting like this.	Spots on, black out on other lights. RS on first foreign reporter
11	Immediately after previous cue, when reporter starts talking	LS on, on window for second reporter
11	Immediately after previous cue, when reporter starts talking	Right reporter light on
11	Immediately after previous cue, when reporter starts talking	Left reporter light on
11	When all reporters stop talking	Blackout,  Dandy Dan’s Sunlight on
12	Doodle: Boss give me a break! Boss!	DDS down, duller speakeasy up
13	Fizzy: Night Miss Tallulah	RS on Fizzy
14	End of song and curtains close	Front + Stair on, RS on De Veldt in audience, LS on acts
15	ODV: Don’t give up your day job.	RS on Bugsy and Blousey
51	Bugsy: Shhs there’s a truck pulling up	Down and out lights up
52	Bugsy: Listen.	Lower house on
53	Smolsky: we know you’re in there	Center Stair light on
55	O’Dreary: Somewhere else, Captain. Smolsky Bashes O’Dreay with his hat	Black out on Down and Outs, DDS up
56	Dandy Dan: To kind, too kind. Now for fat Sam’s grand Slam.	DDS down, Speakeasy lights up
56	Bugsy: Razamataz, Hit the ivories!	Effects up