Santa Susana High School

A Study on Theatre Advocacy

Senior Project Research Paper

Natasha Schlaffer
AP English 12 - Period 2
Mr. Frederic White
19 November 2015

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Introduction
For my senior project I am leading, crafting, and organizing a national advocacy month in
March called Theatre In Our Schools Month (TIOS). For TIOS I am leading my team of
International Thespian Officers (ITO) in crafting a digital toolbox for International Thespian
Society-member high schools across the nation to use and advocate with during the month of
March. Included in this toolbox will be press release templates, TIOS logos for t-shirts, advocacy
event suggestions, a promotional video featuring celebrities speaking about the importance of
theatre education, posters, etc. I will also be traveling around the country throughout the year
teaching student advocacy workshops and promoting TIOS. Additionally, we will finish off TIOS
month in March by traveling to Washington D.C. and participating in National Arts Advocacy
Day; there we will meet with key policymakers and speak with them about the importance of
theatre education in public schools. TIOS is being sponsored by the American Alliance for
Theatre Education (AATE) and the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA).
In order to accomplish all of this, I will need to be extremely adept in marketing and
advocacy techniques; the two are rather remarkably similar, the only difference being that one is
meant to sell a product while the other is meant to sell the audience on taking action on a cause. I
must also be an expert on how educational theatre benefits students in order to best make my
case. Marketing and advocacy techniques as well as knowledge about the benefits of theatre
education will all help me in better achieving my goal of making national Theatre In Our
Schools month a success.
Research
While reading on marketing techniques, it is quite nearly impossible to find an article
from the past decade that does not have a strong focus on social media. Indeed, one study

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suggested that smart marketers actually use a combination of digital and offline
communications with their target audiences (Fulgoni and Lipsman). Another study suggested that
online marketing via social media is a particularly important strategy because it allows marketers
to interact directly with consumers; because of this, consumers are able to be active participants
in crafting products and advertising campaigns by offering input online, which can contribute to
the success of a marketing campaign (Palmer et al). As for content, Fulgoni and Lipsman found
that social media pages need not always necessarily post about products, experiences, etc.
(although a large amount of posts should talk about those things) as posting regularly will
influence consumers behaviors regardless of what the posts subject is.
Another successful marketing technique, according to Hung, is celebrity endorsement,
which attracts interest from consumers and facilitates brand loyalty; it also lends the product
credibility and attractiveness. People like to buy products that they believe celebrities use
because they want to live vicariously through the celebrities they idolize; celebrities like doing
endorsements of products because it helps them market themselves as a brand too (Creswel).
Celebrity endorsement works because it plays off of the consumers playful motives,
aspirational motives, celebrity fantasies, and emotional investment to make the consumer
want to buy the product (Hung). According to Creswel, another contributing factor to the success
of celebrity endorsements is the emergence of television shows, magazines, and websites that
chronicle celebrities mundane, everyday lives; this makes consumers want to consume the same
products that they see the celebrity consuming on a day-to-day basis.
Good marketing strategy alone, however, does not guarantee success. Rather, marketers
must also have effective implementation, evaluation, and control mechanisms to be successful
(Ishak et al). One important factor that goes into effective implementation of marketing strategies

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is team involvement; it is extremely important to communicate with ones staff and give them all
the opportunity to contribute for them to feel committed to the success of the product
(Implementing a Marketing Plan). Evaluation and control are also important because they help
the marketer determine how well their strategies fair against uncertain external conditions, so
that they are able to adjust accordingly (Ishak et al). Monitoring ones progress is an essential
part of this; one must be able gauge whether they are on track for reaching their goal and whether
or not their tactics have been successful thus far if they ever hope to improve and evolve their
marketing strategies to increase effectiveness (Implementing a Marketing Plan).
While advocacy and marketing are similar in practice, advocacy is defined differently as
the act of trying to persuade or convince someone of something, as opposed to marketing which
is trying to convince someone specifically to buy something (Weiner). According to Duke Law
School, the most important principal of advocacy is to know your audience, and tailor your
message to fit their ability and knowledge-base; you would not advocate to an expert in the field
you are advocating for in the same way you would speak to an average everyday citizen. Weiner
says that another important thing to remember about advocating face-to-face is to always speak
conversationally to your audience, as opposed to reading from a script in order to lend yourself
authority and credibility, as well as an air of preparedness. It is also important to remember,
while advocating to an audience in person that you must be prepared to answer any questions
that may be directed at you; therefore, you must practically be an expert in your subject (Tips
on Oral Advocacy).
It seems that nowadays, however, more and more advocates are turning away from
advocating in person, and instead using the Internet to further their causes; indeed, according to
Shapero, even presidential candidates are finding more success in advocating for themselves

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online rather than by meeting people in person, due to the webs ability to reach huge amounts of
people instantaneously. Because of this, many advocacy groups actually find more success in
hiring individuals who are experts in social media marketing as opposed to experts in the field
they are advocating for since online marketing is of such vital importance (Lubienski and Malin).
Online advocacy campaigns are especially effective at mobilizing online audiences to take action
for ones cause; the web, therefore, is particularly essential to the success of advocacy campaigns
(Shapero).
However important media skills are to advocacy, though, Weiner suggests that an ideal
advocate is still an expert in their field. Therefore, when advocating for theatre education in
schools, it would be irresponsible to not be aware of the numerous ways in which students
benefit from theatre education, not the least of which is that students who learn academic
subjects in classroom settings infused with theatre arts outperform their peers who do not learn in
these settings in English Language Arts and in Mathematics on standardized tests (Inoa et al). In
fact, data collected from the College Board suggests that students who took four years of arts
classes during high school outperformed their peers who did not take arts classes by 96 points on
average (Arts Students Outperform Non Arts Students on SATs). Theatre is especially
important to the success of students in language arts testing, as dramatic enactment of literary
works helps students improve writing, reading comprehension and oral language skills; this is
especially true of children with learning disabilities (Inoa et al).
Indeed, theatre education is known to benefit children with learning disabilities in various
ways, including by helping them display higher motivation, increasing their communication and
social skills, and by generally helping them learn and achieve more than their counterparts
without theatre education do (Hayhow and Trowsdale). Theatre education does not only benefit

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children with learning disabilities, however; in fact, the integration of arts into academic
instruction has been identified as a key determining factor in the success of schools in low
income areas (Inoa et al). In his 2009 study, Catterall found that high poverty students in fact
display higher levels of motivation, improved self-esteem, and more empathy for others after
taking theatre education courses; theatre education has even been known to increase attendance,
as students have incentive to go to school if they look forward to their arts classes.
Theatre is not only utilized in the classroom for students with learning disabilities or low
socioeconomic statuses, however; theatre is in fact increasingly used even in educational medical
programs in post-secondary school establishments in order to facilitate critical reflection and
discussion as well as professionalism amongst future medical professionals (Brett-MacLean et
al). Medical schools use theatre training as a tried and true method to increase students empathy
and communication skills, which are now considered essential elements of medical education
(Piver et. al). Indeed, it is believed by many educators in the medical field that students should
take theatre courses because an education in emotions from theatre will lead students to become
more moral decision-makers, a trait that is considered desirable among medical professionals,
who often must deal with sick patients and their distraught families (Levy). Theatre education
does not only benefit future medical professionals, however. Rather, it benefits professionals
seeking jobs in business fields as well, where companies find applicants who have received
theatre education more desirable than those who have not; in fact, 85% of business executives
say that they desire creativity in a job candidate, and that they believe that whether or not the
candidate had received any arts education was a good indicator of their creativity (Unmasking
Business Success: Executive Perceptions of Arts Engagement and Workforce Skills).

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Arts education does not only benefit arts students: it also benefits the American economy
as a whole. It is estimated that in 2010, nonprofit arts organizations brought $61.1 billion worth
of income into the US economy; this, of course, could not be possible without arts education in
schools inspiring young artists to contribute to arts organizations when it comes time for them to
enter the workforce. Indeed, nonprofit arts and culture organizations alone create approximately
4.13 million full-time jobs each year within the US (Arts and Economic Prosperity IV).
Conclusion
My research on marketing, advocacy, and the benefits of theatre education proved to be
altogether extremely helpful to the crafting and implementation of Theatre In Our Schools. I was
able to successfully craft a social media marketing campaign which the ITO will implement via
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram using what I learned; we have created a timeline of what to
post when, in order to keep up consistency since my research suggests that frequency is of the
utmost importance while marketing online. We also successfully created an online toolbox,
which will be diffused via email to thespian troupe directors all over the country in order to best
create a call to action for our online audience, as my research seemed to indicate that this is what
the use of the internet would be most effective for.
We hope to utilize information about celebrity endorsement in my project by creating a
promotional video for TIOS featuring celebrity guests speaking about the importance of theatre
education in schools. Weve already crafted our interview questions; now its just a matter of
getting a celebrity to sign on. Due to the abundance of contacts in show business that the
International Thespian Society has, however, we do not anticipate that this will be particularly
difficult.

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We also have ways to gauge the effectiveness of our campaign. When we send out our
email blast to advertise our online toolbox, we require all participating troupes to register. This
way, we will be able to see how effective we are at getting troupe directors to register to
participate in TIOS, and we will be able to adjust our strategies to maximize effectiveness if
necessary. Because we are posting most of our promotion via social media, we will also be able
to request that our followers send us pictures of them participating in TIOS events; this will also
serve as a way to measure our effectiveness in terms of online marketing.
My advocacy research was also very helpful in my TIOS preparation. In light of what I
learned from it, I will make sure that my team and I are fully prepared before we go to
Washington D.C. for Arts Advocacy Day. This way we will be able to present to congressional
policy makers professionally, in a conversational manner instead of losing credibility by reading
from a script and seeming unprepared. I will also make sure to share all of the helpful facts about
how arts education benefits theatre students with my team. Information like that will be helpful
to be able to pull off the top of our heads when advocating to policymakers, and also even when
we are teaching student advocacy workshops to students across the country. We will be able to
gauge which facts would be most effective in our advocating by judging our audiences, as I
found in my research; certain facts that I learned would be more effective for certain audiences
than others.
In conclusion, my research has helped me craft TIOS into a professional campaign which
will launch this March. My team and I are proud of the work weve done thus far, and we will
continue to promote and improve TIOS leading up to and during March. We think that, while our
social media promotion is extremely important, we may gain the most participants by promoting
TIOS in person whenever we visit state Thespian Festivals. The rest of our TIOS toolbox and

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materials are in fact set to be published online within the next month or so at
https://www.schooltheatre.org/programs/tios.
My team and I were grateful for the chance to have helped served thousands of thespians
and theatre educators nationwide by providing them with the tools they need to advocate for their
school arts programs. The ultimate goal would be to help them create or grow their programs in
order to spread the gift of theatre education to all students in America, and then abroad. We were
happy to have helped lead the EdTAs first TIOS month in years, and update it for the new age of
technology and media.

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Works Cited
Arts and Economic Prosperity IV. Americans for the Arts. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.
Arts Students Outperform Non Arts Students on SATs. Americans for the Arts. Web. 16 Nov.
2015.
Brett-MacLean, Pamela, Ameer Farooq, and Yiu, Verna. Exploring Professionalism in
Undergraduate Medical and Dental Education through Forum Theatre. Journal for
Learning through the Arts 8.1 (2012): 1-13. Center for Learning in the Arts, Sciences and
Sustainability, UC Irvine. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.
Catterall, James S. Doing Well and Doing Good by Doing Art. The AEP Wire, Mar. 2009.
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Creswel, Julie. Nothing Sells Like Celebrity. The New York Times 22 June 2008. Web. 14
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Fulgoni, Gian M. and Lipsman, Andrew. Digital Word of Mouth and Its Offline
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Hayhow, Richard, and Towsdale, Jo. Can Mimetics, a Theatre-Based Practice, Open

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Possibilities for Young People with Learning Disabilities? A Capability Approach.
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Inoa, Rafael, Carmine Tabone, and Weltseke, Gustave. A Study on the Relationship
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Journal for Learning through the Arts 10.1 (2014): 1-21. Center for Learning in the Arts,
Sciences and Sustainability, UC Irvine. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.
Levy, Jonathon. Theatre and Moral Education. Journal of Aesthetic Education 31.3 (1997): 6575. University of Illinois Press. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.
Malin, J. R., & Lubienski, C. (2015). Educational expertise, advocacy, and media influence.
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Palmer, Mark, Geoff Simmons, and Katy Mason. "Web-Based Social Movements Contesting

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Marketing Strategy: The Mobilisation Of Multiple Actors And Rhetorical Strategies."
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Piver, Debra E., Jo Marie Reilly, Pamela B. Shaeff, and Trial, Janet. Using Theater to
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8.1 (2012): 1-8. Center for Learning in the Arts, Sciences and Sustainability, UC Irvine.
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Unmasking Business: Success Executive Perceptions of Arts Engagement and Workforce
Skills. Theatre Forward. Educational Theatre Association, 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

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Weiner, Frederick Bernays. Oral Advocacy. Harvard Law Review 62.1 (1948): 56-75. The
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