Team Building with Not Ready for Bedtime Players

In early Fall, we led a program with Not Ready for Bedtime Players, a theater troupe based out of UMass Amherst. This group is “an award-winning peer sexuality education troupe” whose “lively, entertaining skits address health issues impacting the university community, including: healthy sexuality, gender, relationships, sexually transmitted infections, GLBTQ issues, violence prevention, substance use and much more!” They strive to “educate others to think critically about sexuality, encourage fellow students to make safer decisions and laugh.”

https://www.umass.edu/studentlife/health-safety/chp/not-ready-bedtime-players

Our program with them took place in the student union building at Umass, where the small group of about 13 people who were all new to the theater troupe spent the day solving problems together. It was an opportunity for them to take part in a collaborative teambuilding adventure, and it was all based in a class room and in a hallway outside the classroom.

They did a three hour progression of activities that culminated with an initiative, called bullring, that took them from the classroom out into the hallway and back into another classroom

Early on in this progression, we took the group through a leadership continuum activity, where we had them plot themselves within 4 quadrants of leadership preferences/strengths. This helps each individual find out who they are in terms of the context of their leadership within the group. During the activities that they accomplished throughout the day, they were able to better understand how they brought their own personal leadership strengths to the challenges – and this gave them a context through which they could analyze the culminating activity.

They were posed with the initiative of completing the Bull Ring Challenge in their classroom and out into the hall. In this challenge, each person holds the end of one of many strings that are a attached to a ring, and in that ring we place a rubber ball that they need to keep balanced on the ring without dropping it. Once they lift the ring up off the ground, they need to navigate through the obstacles around them to transport the ring to it’send destination. We challenged this group to transport the ball out of the class room, into the hallways, and back into the classroom through a different door.

One of the fun aspects of doing this challenge indoors was that they needed to figure out how tomake their way out of the classroom

The narrow passage through the doorways presented a unique challenge for them, and they came up with unique solutions.

Together, they managed to get the entire apparatus into the hallway.

And they made their way back into the classroom.

Now on the homestretch, they carefully lowered the ball down towards the cone – the ball’s end destination. This process is deceptively difficult.

And in the end, they achieved success!

The group was very high energy and fun to work with. There was a real sense of inspired, altruistic participation – they seemed very dedicated to being there and working as a team. It was clear that this group has a strong desire to serve the community and the people who the troupe is getting their messages out to. Best of luck, Not Ready for Bedtime Players!