The performing arts activities begin with a visiting artist residency in the classroom. The artist will work with a group of students from one to three days teaching fundamentals of playwrighting, staging, etc. The resulting activity is a student-written, ten minute play from each student. The manuscript is composed in a word processing program and converted into an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. This reduces the size of the file and makes it possible for the visiting artist to mark up the manuscript in a traditional manner while the original document remains intact.
Students post their first draft online where the mentor downloads the manuscript.
The visiting artist marks up and comments on the manuscript, then uploads the document for the student to retrieve. It is then the student's responsibility to revise the manuscript and repost the revised play. The document is then considered open for all on the network to comment. Subsequent revisions are encouraged. Each year, Vermont Stage Company hosts a festival of student written plays where many of the online manuscripts are realized in a theater setting.