Abstract:
The Philippine Educational Theater Association is a theater organization built to promote social change and empowerment through its plays and performances. Its purpose is clear to perform and educate. The idea of revealing the socio-political concerns through plays of PETA may be a source of encouragement or attitude change for the audience to think more or have more concern for the country thus it makes the audience look for answers and solutions from the performances. But with such issues, how does theater organizations like PETA can make sure that it connects to its audience and not make them hold back from the concerns PETA wants to address.
This study will answer the question; how does PETA make its plays with issues appealing to its target audience? To answer this the researcher have identified the following objectives; know the issues Philippine Educational Theater Association deals with in its plays, identify the target audience for plays with such issues and identify the strategies that draw audience to the plays.
In this paper the researcher tackled briefly three of PETA's production namely Libby Manaoag Files, Dreamweavers: A Tapest,y of Women's Stories, and Skin Deep which show some of the issues PETA presents in its performances. Libby Manaoag Files tackled domestic violence and women's rights. Dreamweavers: A Tapestry of Women's Stories showed feminization of poverty. And Skin Deep, PETA's first major performance for 2008 tackled gender inequality and discrimination. The book also presented
strategies used in the four productions to draw target audiences wherein the product, place, price, and promotion on posters, press releases and letters were analyzed. The study shows how art imitates life in performances and how it functions as a medium for social transformation. The attendance figures on the three plays as discussed in this book showed the success of PETA in drawing audiences to its productions. In the play Dreamweavers the target number of audience is 5,000. After the performances the production was successful by drawing 8,853 audiences. Same with the Libby Ma11aoag Files which had its audiences went beyond the expected number of viewers. And Skin Deep as the only play discussed in the book that was shown in the new theater center of PETA was again
successful since it had audiences that often exceed the number of seats available in the playhouse.
