- Reporting
The program was called Teater Muzikal Perdana Selasehku Sayang, which was based on the theatre script title. The performance happened on the 12th of December, 2019, started at 9 p.m. and the performance was held at Pavilion CCSL, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Skudai, Johor. The main involvement was multiracial and multiethnic UTM students that were enrolled in the co-curriculum class, theatre (UKQS2112-01) of the year 2019. With only 34 people including myself in the class, other 8 students were casted to be the main actors and actresses, and 3 others as the narrator, the makeup artist, and the musician- as our theatre was meant to be live musical. Together along with our assigned coach, Tuan Haji Ramlee bin Haji Salikon, 3 months of practicing and training in the means of the program, it was also intended to bring all people from different countries together as a family, and to learn what it means to be as “one” despite our obvious differences. Based on that, all of us comprising of Malays, Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, Arabians, and Africans learnt about different cultures in the period we spent time together, especially the true classical Malay culture which what was the main theme for the program.
As I was appointed to be the president of the class, I also held the position of a director for the theatre program due to my previous experiences in acting in primary school. I had to make all of the decisions during the whole program and activities, whether it was a “yes” or a “no” towards whatever choices my teammates made. I also had to make sure that everybody was on their feet, not dozing off behind the scene, and always making progress.
During the performance, the weather was excellent the whole time. Since it was held outdoors, the weather was really an important factor to be kept in mind. The wind was present but not too strong to blow away all of the props, and the rain did not come despite it came most of the days before the real performance. In the main audience at the front seats, there was our coach including his VIP members that he brought along to witness our performance. Two extra tents were put up with approximately 200 empty chairs for UTM students to sit, and the audience gradually grew from non-existent until it was a full-house.
- Responding
During the whole performance, all I ever felt was anxious and nervous of the outcome. Especially when there were some technical errors with the microphone that we did not see it coming, and it caused a chaos especially during the singing performances. Audience were also affected by it when they shouted about how they could not hear our actors and actresses. I was also scared of not having any reactions from the audience, of their possible disappointment towards the performance, and by making the program a failure. I also could not have hidden my worries towards the weather, wondering if it might rain since it was the raining season at the moment. The whole show, props, and the electrical appliances would have been ruined if the rain together with a strong wind had come, whilst making the audience under the tent uncomfortable.
Nonetheless, I also felt very excited and delighted with gratitude towards all of it. My teammates and the casts did a very good job at keeping up. Even so every body had a particular task of their own, when problems arose, none of them hesitated to give a hand behind the stage, making sure whatever was going on the stage ran smoothly. I appreciated their help in being prepared for any bad outcomes, such as wrapping the electrical appliances with thick plastics to prevent from getting wet in case of the rain, running around the stage area multiple times to exchange the non-working microphones, and filling in other people’s spot when they had issues.
The program went really well despite the technical errors because of the casts did not let the issues got to them. Whenever a problem popped out, the casts would enhance their performance to steal the audience’s attention. Although the crowd took a little time to fill in the tents until during half-time of the performance, they actually understood the storyline until the end of the act. It was because we heard very loud reactions whether it was a cheer or a boo, the response from the audience told us that they understood and enjoyed the performance- which that is what it was really all about.
The end of the performance ended with a huge cheer and applause that made me cried behind the stage. It was very emotional and overwhelming, to have felt all of the anxiousness before and to have the relief at the end of it. I knew that the program would have been successful, but to have experienced it myself as the person “in charge”, to be one the people who was responsible for the success, it was really one of the happiest moments in my life.
- Relating
Previously in my life, I had experience something similar with the program regarding to the activities. As the program was created during our learning session in the theatre class (UKQS2112-01), the main activities were mostly based on the art of theatre, acting, dancing, and playing music. I had the experience in acting in front of the camera, acting on theatre stage, and singing live in primary school as the basic knowledge for the program. Having those experiences also what caused me to be appointed as the president of the class since I was the only student with the most common skills. With what I have, I was able to open for an audition for castings, to look for potential students that have the talent to act and sing at the same time. I also helped them in rehearsals, for better performance and believable expressions. Other than that, I also helped my teammates in finding the suitable music, suitable props, and suitable costumes for the performance.
However, I never really had the experience of being a president nor being a director myself, besides being a leader in small group projects during school and diploma. I am naturally an assertive person, so I have always had the initiative to lead other people within a group. By that, I stepped up my game to handle every position in my team as I was responsible for their actions. Opposite of the position of a president, it was quite intimidating and scary to boss people around because based on my experience, it is hard to be likable when you are the person “in charge”. I learnt many new things too while being a president, since every body had to come up to me for an agreement, I was exposed to various topics and varieties of issues. Things like shopping for necessities, marketing, documentaries, finding sponsorships, handling electrical appliances and borrowing equipment from outsiders, they were all new subjects to me and I could not have experienced it without my appointed position.
One of the interesting things that happened during the whole program was also the amount of interaction that we had among our classmates and casted actors and actresses. It was the first program that I was able to communicate so much with so many different people from different places. I had the chance to expose the cultures that exist in Malaysia to the foreign students of UTM. As an example, we combined the Indonesian students and an African student together to perform zapin dancing routine while we combined an Arabian student together with an African student to play the kompang as parts of the performance. Communicating was a bit hard to do due to our different slangs and dialects, but we all still interacted and had fun.
- Reasoning
In the face of the successful program, there were also some major setbacks within the 3 months of working things out. Among 34 people, a little disagreement and arguments are inevitable. Nevertheless, the program still went on and we succeed in achieving our goals. The only key to any good performance or a program is teamwork, and teamwork is quite hard to achieve with that many people with different background and personality. So, this is where the knowledge for team cognition comes in handy. But to make it happen is a practice among ourselves, not just to the leader.
According to the Literature Review of Teamwork Models, there are 8 representative theories on human teamwork, which in short are (1) social psychological approaches, (2) sociotechnical approaches, (3) ecological approaches, (4) human resource approaches, (5) technological approaches, (6) lifecycle approach, (7) task-oriented approach, and (8) integrative approach, and it also says that based on the Team Effectiveness and Decision Making in Organizations, human teamwork is only split up into 3 extends which are (1) cognitions, (2) skills, and (3) attitudes (Cannon-Bowers et.al, 1995) (Sycara & Sukthankar, 2006).
Consequently, the theories meant to say that in order to obtain team cognition, communication is the vital skill let it be verbal or non-verbal. Interactions are important among team members to make them feel related and appreciated whilst utilizing their talents and capabilities, so to not leaving anyone behind. Stressing over work also should be avoided from implying it on the team to avoid from damaging the relationships, and instead using communication skills to address the issues together for solutions. Sometimes, whenever the interactions came to bad terms, people would just avoid each other and decided to act on their own. Not realizing it, working alone actually consumed more time and energy and ideas became more limited and restricted, thus impacting the whole progress of the program.
Attitudes are rather important in developing teamwork, no matter how skillful a person can be. It may be difficult to some people to ignore their ego, step aside and let other people utilize their ideas instead, but in giving in, there will be more in gaining benefits for the whole team. By being synchronous, it is so much easier to have a final say in making decisions rather than being so divergent among the group.
- Reconstructing
I have learnt that I must be more patient in handling problems among my teammates, so that every body would still have the initiative to come together and solve the problems. Since I got mad once during our meeting due to the incompetency of some of the members, most of them retreated and got intimidated. That affect not only our relationship, but also the whole process in the program as they rarely showed up anymore for practices and meetings. For that, I knew that I must acknowledge their feelings as individuals. Talking one-on-one with the actual person who made a mess is preferable than lashing out openly, even so if it did not feel that bad for me, it might have been worse to others. This is one of the most important graduate attributes that I discovered, communication skill.
But once I tried to mend the relationships, some of the crews ganged up on me and mistreat the kindness that I tried to give. Perhaps, I must find the balance between being firm and soft, so to have their trust and respect. This particular experience was an eye-opening, that I determined to be more professional in the future no matter how complicated the situations would get. For the graduate attribute on leadership, I learnt that patience is not the only thing that would make things work. Sometimes, a little stern behavior is the only thing that would make people listen to you, even if it means that they would not like you very much. It is difficult to be in charged and to be likable at the same time because you got to tell people to do things that they might not want to do, especially when that group of people came from many different cultural backgrounds. Now I know that I cannot force people to do things that they do not want to do, but I have to make them want to do it.
I know now that it does not take different cultural background to make people act differently, because people are already different even if they came from the same mother. I could say this because in the end, I actually got graduate attribute adaptability skill, and became good friends with the students from Indonesia, Africa, Arab, Sarawak, and Sabah more than my own Semenanjung classmates. Besides being able to adapt with different environment and different people, I got cultural as one of the graduate attributes too as I have learnt so many new things about their culture. I also learn that I cannot do it all, and I have to let some of it go sometimes, for other people to handle and trust them with it. It is something that I am not used to but I will try. Everything will always turn out better when you are working in a group.
Reference
Sycara, K. & Sukthankar, G. (2006). Literature Review of Teamwork Models. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/pub4/sycara_katia_2006_1/sycara_katia_2006_1.pdf