As a theatre educator, advocacy can sometimes feel like an abstract concept, something reserved for policy experts, state leaders, or people with time you simply don’t have. But most theatre educators are already advocating every day, whether they call it that or not: making the case for their programs, protecting student opportunities, building support with families, and finding ways to keep theatre visible in their schools.
Sometimes, though, those same advocacy skills can be applied on an even larger scale, and those stories can offer a powerful roadmap. In California, theatre and dance educators spent decades fighting to restore a credential that had effectively disappeared from state policy in 1970. What eventually brought it back wasn’t one organization working alone, but a coalition across arts disciplines, aligned around a shared goal and committed to seeing it through.
EdTA chatted with two arts education leaders who helped carry that work forward, Dr. Eric Engdahl and Krista Carson Elhai, to talk about what it took to rebuild theatre licensure in California, why coalition-building was essential, and how the same advocacy lessons can apply in communities far beyond California.
A Credential Lost, and Why It Mattered
One of the most striking parts of California’s story is how ordinary the starting point was: a legislative typo.
As Carson Elhai noted, it’s the kind of story that makes those old “punctuation matters” T-shirts feel very real. In 1970, a drafting error in state credential language left out the “s” in “arts,” effectively leaving theatre and dance out of the state’s credential structure.
California still had theatre educators, but not a clear, dedicated credential pathway. In practice, that often meant schools hired teachers under other credentials and assigned them to teach theatre anyway—if they had a program at all. That gap mattered for more than compliance. It shaped the quality and consistency of theatre instruction students received.
Carson Elhai often explains it with a comparison school leaders immediately understand: math. Students are expected to learn from a trained math educator—someone who knows the subject and how to teach it. A student learning Algebra I from someone who had only taken “a couple of math classes in college,” she said, would never be acceptable. “We would not be OK with that.”
As Engdahl emphasized, theatre educators are often expected to teach performance, technical theatre, directing, theatre history, and more. For years, many schools assigned that work to educators without formal theatre training, something Carson Elhai said they saw “over and over and over.”
How California Built the Coalition That Brought the Credential Back
California’s path to restoring the credential didn’t start with a single bill. For Carson Elhai, the real turning point came when leaders from California’s arts organizations began meeting regularly across disciplines.
The presidents of the four arts organizations got on a monthly call, rotated leadership, and started sharing strategy. “We really started sharing just everything,” she said. That shift was especially important for theatre and dance.
Carson Elhai noted that their music colleagues were already further along in advocacy infrastructure and helped model what coordinated policy work could look like. Just as important, they brought a clear mindset from the beginning: “We need to do this together.” She called that approach “incredibly important” for theatre, and especially for dance, which had the smallest footprint.
But aligning the arts groups was only part of the work. Engdahl explained that the coalition also had to expand beyond the arts organizations and bring in the people who could actually move legislation. A major turning point was getting the Democratic controlled California Teachers Association (CTA) on board. In California, he said, “nothing happens in the legislature if the CTA is against it.”
That broader coalition also gave the campaign staying power. Carson Elhai said earlier attempts often felt overwhelming because there were so many moving parts. What changed was the structure of the effort. Once the coalition was working together, “everybody had an important piece and everybody had a person that took the lead on it.”
Turning a Coalition into a Legislative Win
As the coalition grew, the strategy got sharper.
Engdahl pointed to the importance of finding the right zive champion and framing the issue in language that would resonate. When Senator Ben Allen got involved, one thing that stood out was California’s entertainment economy and the fact that the state still did not have theatre and dance credentials. Engdahl said Allen was “quite surprised.”
That opened the door to a stronger message: workforce development.
Engdahl described this as one of the most important lessons from the campaign: knowing “what jargon to use at the right time with the right people.” In legislative conversations, “workforce development” became a powerful way to explain the issue because it connected theatre credentialing to something lawmakers already understood: building the future educator workforce.
The coalition also learned that timing matters as much as messaging. Looking back, Engdahl noted how important it was to understand “timing and knowing when to ask and when you’re likely to get what you want.”
Shared leadership, the right partners, clear messaging, and patience are what finally moved the credential fight forward. California’s win did not come from one meeting or one bill. It came from years of coordinated advocacy and a coalition that learned how to move a shared goal through the system.
Advocacy Lessons from California’s Credentialing Journey
Not every state is fighting for a theatre credential, but every theatre educator is advocating for something: funding, staffing, course access, facilities, or long-term program support.
That’s why California’s story matters during Theatre in Our Schools Month (TIOS). The campaign helped bring the Theatre and Dance Act (TADA) across the finish line, restoring the pathway for theatre and dance credentials in California. And it led to measurable outcomes. Engdahl shared that after Prop 28 and with the credential pathway in place, enrollment in his program doubled, with strong theatre, visual art, and dance participation—and, as he put it, “they’re getting hired.”
This was never just symbolic. California’s credential fight changed what access to theatre education can look like in real schools, from who gets hired to how programs are staffed. For theatre educators planning advocacy outreach, the question is: what can we take from that process? The answer is in how the work got done:
- Start with students, not the system. Carson Elhai emphasized that the strongest advocacy efforts begin with a simple question: what will benefit students most? Keeping students at the center helps clarify your message and makes it easier for administrators, families, and community partners to understand the “why” behind your ask.
- Build a coalition beyond theatre. One of the biggest turning points in California was when arts educators aligned across disciplines instead of advocating in silos. Carson Elhai’s advice to other states was direct: “band together with all your arts orgs,” because “your strength is in numbers.”
- Bring in the people who can move decisions. California’s coalition grew stronger when it expanded beyond arts organizations and included people with legislative influence. The lesson for local advocacy is to identify who actually shapes decisions in your district or community and build relationships there. (In California’s case, that included CTA, a key legislative player.)
- Use language your audience already understands. Engdahl pointed to “workforce development” as a framing that helped legislators connect with the credentialing issue. His larger point was strategy: advocacy gets stronger when you use the right language for the right audience. That might mean talking to school leaders about student outcomes, to families about confidence and belonging, or to community leaders about career readiness and arts access.
- Start local and show up consistently. Carson Elhai offered one of the most practical takeaways in the interview: go to school board meetings, bring students when possible, and share what your program is doing.
California’s credential fight took years, but the habits behind it are the same ones theatre educators already use every day: collaboration, preparation, and persistence. Theatre in Our Schools Month is a chance to put those skills to work beyond the classroom, whether that means building a new arts coalition, strengthening a local relationship, or making one clear ask on behalf of your students. If your state doesn’t have theatre licensure, this is also a reminder to start building the coalition that can push it forward. And if it does, it’s an opportunity to lend your voice and support to educators in states still fighting for the same pathway.
