THE COMMUNICATION ECOLOGY OF THEATRE PUBLICITY: PROPAGATION, AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE AND PERFORMANCE RESONANCE

Theatre publicity is often treated as the practical work of announcing a production and persuading people to attend. That description is necessary but incomplete. It does not explain how information moves through overlapping interpersonal, institutional and digital networks; why the same campaign produces strong responses in one group and indifference in another; or how publicity, venue experience and post-performance discussion become connected. This conceptual article develops a communication-ecology model of theatre publicity. It brings the communicative ecology perspective into conversation with Chris Nwamuos audience engineering, Temple Hauptfleischs seismology of theatre, audience-development scholarship and the authors developing Performance Resonance Theory.