Alien Nation: Students of Voices of Now bring Spacecraft Human to the Stage
- Paper number
IAC-18,E1,9,6,x48365
- Author
Ms. Monica Ebert, United States, School for Independent Learners
- Year
2018
- Abstract
The journey of Spacecraft Human continues in a theatrical collaboration, entering the “Mission Operation Phase”. Introduced last year, Spacecraft Human is an outreach activity from the Mission Design Center at NASA Ames Research Center that compares the human body to a spacecraft, utilizing analogies to teach space systems engineering and health. The collaborators are actors in the Voices of Now, a program that devises autobiographical plays with ensembles of middle-school, high-school and adult artists based in Washington, D.C. at the Arena Stage Mead Center for American Theater. This collaboration and discussions that followed ignited the creative minds and led the actors of the “Mentor” student ensemble to co-create an autobiographical play titled “Alien Nation” for performance at the Voices of Now festival. By adding Spacecraft Human techniques to the established devising process of Voices of Now, they explored an innovative way of using science to support and influence their artistic process. The methodologies utilized include yoga, improvisational theater and movement, playwriting, STEAM and space education, multidisciplinary collaboration, and project documentation using live action virtual reality. The powerful ending to the journey is the will to tell a universal story of involving everyone in the future of space exploration, expanding creative minds in unconventional ways.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)