Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2018 - Public - 54

Challenging Activities

Pictured: Karla Sofia Perez Lopez. Photo by Jesus Lopez V.

worries of failure. What a powerful and
warm feeling it is! I want to expand and
hug the world. I feel enormous power to
effect something of grace and beauty"
(Csíkszentmihályi 1990, 53). These examples are numerous and familiar, but
critics may argue that these flow states
are not representative of the day-to-day
life of a theatre artist. While such examples of euphoric flow states can occur in
artistic professions, non-artists and new
artists may romanticize artistic professions, assuming such flow states are
daily experiences. While artistic pursuits
lend themselves to flow experiences,
these common arts-based examples of
flow describe, and in many ways define,
the optimum experience rather than a
daily occurrence.
How can theatre professionals find
more constant and intense enjoyment
in their work? To answer this question,
I surveyed theatre designers and technicians from various disciplines and with
various levels of experience. This unscientific survey of 20 anonymous respondents included students, educators, and
professional artists working in costuming, scenery, lighting, sound, and stage
management. I used a basic prompt that
Csíkszentmihályi used in some of his research, which included three quotes that
described the flow state. I then asked the
respondents: 1) Have you ever experienced this feeling while working in your

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THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

SPRING 2018

area of technical theatre? 2) If yes, what
were you doing at the time of these experiences? 3) In your own words, describe
one example of this type of experience.
4) Based on your own observations,
what types of situations over the course
of a production make this type of experience MORE likely to occur? 5) Based
on your own observations, what type of
situations over the course of a production makes this type of experience LESS
likely to occur?
By taking a closer look at my colleagues' responses about their experiences of flow and analyzing them
through the lens of Csíkszentmihályi's
psychological model, I have identified
several possible ways of increasing the
odds of having flow experiences in theatrical workplaces, as well as several challenges to achieving flow that are specific
to technical theatre.
To understand optimal experiences
and how they relate to jobs in technical
theatre, one needs to understand how
flow is achieved. There are several characteristics of optimally enjoyable experiences, including: 1) challenging activities
that require skill; 2) clear goals and feedback; 3) complete concentration; 4) loss
of self-consciousness; 5) perception of
control; and 6) transformation of time.
What follows is a closer look at each of
these, drawing on the survey responses
of theatre technicians.

Consider this scenario: After attending a
workshop on wig and hair piece ventilation, a costumer has been asked by her
director to provide the lead actor with
a full beard. Although the costumer has
never made a hair piece from scratch
before, she accepts the challenge and
works diligently for a week to create a
lace-back facial appliance that is used for
the production.
This scenario would be a good
example of a theatre technician experiencing flow as a result of focusing
on a challenging activity that requires
skill. In this example, the costumer
faces a relatively difficult task that she
feels equipped to handle. Flow experiences like these most frequently occur
when one engages in an activity that
pushes a person beyond their previous
capabilities and requires them to grow.
According to Csíkszentmihályi, "Enjoyable events occur when a person has
not only met some prior expectation or
satisfied a need or desire but also gone
beyond what he or she has been programmed to do and achieved something
unexpected, perhaps something even
unimagined before. Enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement: by
a sense of novelty, of accomplishment"
(Csíkszentmihályi 1990, 46). For this
type of growth to occur, the perceived
level of challenge and the perceived level
of one's own skills need to be in balance:
"The spot where the task is hard enough
to make us stretch; not hard enough to
make us snap" (Koltler 2014, 4). In other
words, the task must be difficult enough
to require the artist to push beyond her
previous limits, but not so difficult as to
appear to be out of reach.
Among the survey responses from
theatre technicians were several examples that supported this idea. Most of the
enjoyable tasks described in the surveys
were tasks that the individual considered
to be difficult but that the individual had
been well trained to handle. As the interviewee's experience level increased, so
did the difficulty level of the task required
to achieve flow. As one theatre artist said,
"[This type of experience] has happened
to me quite a few times over the years...
especially early in my career-but it still
comes this way, even now, when I am
truly excited about a project." Tasks that
were considered to be so difficult as to

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