NEWPORT, R.I. — Seven in 10 event designers, strategists, and experiential professionals say that mischief should be part of experiential strategy, according to a survey released this week. Respondents were not asked what the strategy was for.

“We used to call it a stunt,” said one senior experience strategist. “Now it’s a pillar, and the framework is called Mischief Theory.” Asked what the pillar was holding up, the strategist said it was “mostly the deck.”

Survey authors said the result confirms what Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish practiced more than a century ago without a single strategy deck. Fish, known as Mamie, is the Newport hostess whom Ashlie Atkinson plays on HBO’s The Gilded Age and whom Jennifer Wright profiles in a recent biography. She issued a statement this week to the nation’s event organizers, which this publication has reviewed.

“My dear event planners of today, let me tell you what was wrong when I began,” the statement reads. “Dinners dragged for hours.” So she served hers in about an hour, fast enough that guests clutched their plates against departing servers, and her invitations promised “something besides dinner.”

The statement then itemizes the mischief. She co-hosted a banquet for the dogs of Newport society, with a menu of stewed liver and rice, fricassee of bones, and shredded dog biscuit. She invited the best of society to dine with a visiting “Prince Del Drago,” who turned out to be a monkey in a tailored dinner suit. She rented an elephant, which dancers fed peanuts as they passed. “Thank God PETA did not exist then,” she adds.

The statement closes with what survey authors called “the actionable portion.” It reads, “Mischief creates memory, purpose creates legacy, chandeliers tarnish, menus fade, lists are forgotten, but the gasp, the laugh, the story whispered on the way home that my dear is forever.”

Planners received the guidance warmly. “We would love to add mischief,” said one corporate event manager, “but Legal needs the elephant’s certificate of insurance by Friday.” Three in 10 respondents said they had already added mischief to an event, and 9 in 10 of those said they had first submitted it to a committee. A separate finding, which the survey described as “not unrelated,” was that the average mischief proposal now requires 4 approvals and a backup mischief.

Fish, who died in 1915, was unavailable for comment on the strategy, but a representative said she had never once requested a budget line for mischief.