Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2018 - 57

board. I feel perfectly at peace, and life
couldn't be happier." And, "when I was
first learning VectorWorks, I spent hours
on end staring at the screen without
blinking, totally oblivious to my surroundings or the people in them. On several
occasions, people actually had to touch
me to get my attention. One time, I recall
my wife asked me why I didn't answer
the phone. I told her the phone never
rang, but sure enough, the next morning
I found three voice messages she had left
me." These examples describe a total immersion into a work experience that is
indicative of flow.
A variation on complete concentration is a task that facilitates stress relief
through focus on a physical task. "I find
setting wigs to be a particular stress-relieving experience," said a survey respondent. 'I start to focus less on the physical
work and more on other creative endeavors that I might previously not had
enough mental space to focus on. I often
find myself subconsciously 'scheduling'
time for setting wigs in between more
stressful tasks or meetings for this very
reason."

This example is very similar to an
example in the book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us
by Daniel H. Pink, who talks about a
woman who enjoys doing the dishes because it gives her permission to contemplate (Pink 2011). For a theatre artist
setting wigs, the flow activity would be
the creative endeavor, the mental work
of designing. In contrast, setting wigs is
an activity that gives permission to focus on a non-physical or non-social task
and takes up just enough mental energy
to prevent the wig setter from thinking
about the stressors.
The survey section on "Complete
Concentration" also yielded numerous
examples of situations that made flow
difficult to achieve. One respondent talked about how physical discomfort could
really pull them out of a flow experience:
"My attention is hard to maintain when
[there are] distractions like technology,
hunger, noises, heat or too much cold,
[or] tiredness. I really have to have my
body in the right comfortable state."
In many cases, while teamwork was
valued, the team brought with it frequent

interruptions that disrupted the flow experience: "Headset chatter" and "people
talking loudly around me" were both cited as situations that made flow less likely.
One respondent described the downside
of teamwork situations: "Working with a
team of people that need questions answered, or you have to solve problems
as a group. Everyone else has a task that
is their focus, but [it] may not be yours
at the moment." In these teamwork or
supervisory situations, flow can be very
hard to achieve when the individual is
attempting to focus on a solitary project
and is frequently interrupted. Distractions pull them out of flow because it
forces them to shift their concentration
to other activities.

Loss of Self-Consciousness

Consider this scenario: A scene painter
is doing feather work on a faux marble
column. He shifts his head from side
to side humming to himself, unaware
of others in the shop who are watching
him. When asked "What were you thinking about?" he responds, "Nothing, it
was like the feather was an extension of

SPRING 2018

THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2018