Flow Experience of the Theatre Audience: Testing the Affective Variety, Intensity, and Valence Hypotheses

Purpose of the present study was to investigate the flow and related affective experience of the theatre audience. The hypotheses that flow experience at the time of play would be associated with highly varied, more intense, and more positive affective experience were proposed on the basis of the relevant literature. Immediately after the play was over, scales which were specifically designed for the present study were administered to 146 voluntary participants who came to watch the play entitled Gideon’s Knot (Adams, 2013) staged in a private theatre in Ankara. Findings indicated that the audience experienced high level of flow at the time of the play and mostly supported the hypotheses of the study. A model which explained the subjective experience of the theatre audience by the concept of flow was proposed also by taking some unexpected findings into account. Results were discussed within the framework of methodological limitations of the study and alternative explanations together with the implications regarding utilization of artistic products in psychotherapy context