Building Trust

Aim of task: The name of the activity is very self-explainable; the aim of this activity was to start building trust between our other Theatre classmates. Since we are going to be working with them as a group, it is very important that we feel comfortable with each other right from the start.

Description of task: Our teacher, Steve, introduced us to the course and the lesson of the day.

We started playing a game that previous theatre students have already played. All of us made a circle and we started passing a ball between ourselves. We could not touch the ball twice and we could not hold the ball, very similar to how volleyball works. The objective of the game was to achieve as much “touches” we could without dropping the ball. The game requires a lot of teamwork because every person in the group needs to be calm when receiving the ball so he can throw the ball again in such a way that the ball can be continuously passed around. Although our third years had achieved a very high record of over 50 touches, the most touches we could get were around 25.

After that, we went back into the classroom and we were divided in groups of five to start playing a game of trust. A person was in the center and the other four of us stood around that person. The person, then, had to close his eyes and cross his arms and pretend as if he was falling. The other four people had to hold the person and prevent them from falling. You could easily see how some people were confident when falling but others did not seem to trust the group yet. It was fun when I went into the center though, since I was the heaviest one of my group and everyone else had to push really hard to hold me!

After that, we made a another trust exercise, but in pairs. One of us had to put one of our hands in the other person's shoulder. Then, we had to guide the person to walk around the room merely by applying a slight force with our hand. After that, we took the exercise even further by guiding the person only with clapping, they had to follow the direction in which we clapped.

A final trust exercise that we did was with the whole class. We made a big circle and Steve let one of us close his eyes and walk forward, inside the circle, with his eyes closed. The person had to be caught by the person on the opposite of the circle, and turn them to another angle, so they could start walking with their eyes closed again. After the activity progressed, more and more people were walking in the circle with their eyes closed. Three people was the maximum and everyone in the circle had their turn to go. When it was my turn, I felt that being guided by the others was comfortable; because I knew they were not going to do me any harm. While walking, though, the distance I walked seemed much larger than the actual distance I walked. It was an enjoyable experience, indeed.

Reflection: The game where we had to pass the ball was a lot of fun. We had to be careful of contributing to the group by passing the ball well. In the other activities, I felt very comfortable in every activity where I had to close my eyes. I knew the others were guiding me.

Conclusion: The activities helped us believe in others. I think my subconscious realised something at the end of the class: I can trust these people. This will be something very useful while performing together, it will make team work so much easier.