Vermont Young Playwrights
VYP Festival, 2026
About Vermont Young Playwrights
Vermont Young Playwrights exists to provide every young Vermonter an opportunity to discover their authentic voice through playwriting. Vermont Stage, Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, The Media Factory, and a network of professional actors, directors, and writers come together every year to produce the largest youth playwriting program in the state, giving students a unique opportunity to write plays that reflect their take on the world. The work that comes out of these classrooms is often funny, provocative, and deeply personal.
Now in its 32nd year, VYP brings professional teaching playwrights into middle and high school classrooms from November through April. Students come from a wide range of backgrounds, urban and rural, native Vermonters and recent immigrants. The program strengthens literacy, communication, empathetic connection, and creative expression. Teachers consistently find that students who don't engage through traditional writing assignments come alive when they discover they have something to say and an audience ready to listen.
At the Festival each May, professional actors and directors collaborate with these student writers to bring selected plays to life at our theatre in downtown Burlington. For many students, hearing their plays performed for the first time in front of an audience is the moment they discover that their words, their ideas, their way of seeing the world, can move people.
Stuck in Vermont feature on VYP
For our 20th VYP Festival, Eva Sollberger stopped by to chat with our students, teachers, and artists to learn more about the program.
How it works
1.
In School Workshops
From November through April, each participating school is assigned a professional teaching playwright for two or three full-day classroom visits. Using performance, improvisation, and unique writing prompts, the teaching playwright guides students through the fundamentals of playwriting: ideas, structure, conflict, and setting. By the end of the workshop phase, every student has written a complete 10-minute play and heard it read aloud in class.
2.
Peer Feedback and Revision
Students read each other's works-in-progress aloud and participate in a structured feedback process guided by the teaching playwright. This critical response work teaches students to speak honestly and generously about each other's writing, and gives every playwright a chance to hear their work before it's finished. Students then revise their plays based on what they heard.
3.
Selection and Submission
Teachers select three plays from their class to submit for Festival consideration. A panel of professional writers, directors, educators, and actors reads and evaluates the submissions, selecting the top two plays from each school. These go forward to Vermont Stage for full production and cold reading at the Festival.
4.
The Festival
Each May, Vermont Stage hires professional actors and directors to rehearse and perform the selected plays at Main Street Landing in Burlington. Up to 250 students gather for a day of performances, cold readings, and theatre workshops. Student playwrights watch their words come off the page and experience an audience respond to what they created.
About The VYP Festival
The 2027 Festival Dates
May 18 & 19, 2027
A day of student work performed and read aloud by professional actors and directors at Main Street Landing in Burlington. Staged readings are performed in the Black Box Theatre and Cold Readings are perfomed in The Film House.
Location: Main Street Landing, 60 Lake Street, 3rd Fl, Burlington
Time: 9:30am–4:00pm each day
Festival Workshops
Theatre for Every Student
Beyond the performances, the Festival offers a full day of hands-on theatre workshops for all participating students. These sessions are physical, funny, and challenging, and designed to immerse students in multiple avenues of theatre-making.
Sample workshops: Stage Combat · Text to Subtext · Improvisation · Gender Bending on Stage · Monologues · Movement
Can’t make it in person?
Watch the Festival Live
The VYP Festival livestreams both days from 9:30am to 4pm. Thanks to The Media Factory for donating their services to make the Festival accessible to families and schools across Vermont who can't be there in person.
What Teachers say…
“The most amazing part of the experience is how the actors and directors take the students’ work so seriously. It changes the way students look at their own work and provides them with an authentic audience.”
“This program offers a unique enrichment experience. The students feel empowered, valued, and engaged in this art form. My advice to other schools interested in participating is to DO IT. You will not be disappointed, and the benefits to you and your students are well worth the time away from core curriculum.”
“Students worked really hard because they were so interested. Students felt that their ideas were valued and that their concerns, struggles, and sense of self were recognized in the process of writing the plays. Several students who have not expressed an interest in school were inspired to write more than they have in two years of Middle School.”
“The workshops shifted their focus from writing either for themselves only or for their teachers to writing for an authentic audience. This program gives the kids who participate a great opportunity to hone their writing and have a real experience that is actually related to academic work.”
Bringing Us to your School
2-Day Residency + Festival
$1,100
Per school · up to 25 students
Two full-day classroom visits from a professional teaching playwright, plus participation in the May Festival
3-Day Residency + Festival
$1,400
Per school · up to 25 students
Three full-day classroom visits from a professional teaching playwright, plus participation in the May Festival
Scholarships Available
Education Equity Fund
For schools that need support, our Education Equity Fund provides partial scholarships for Title I schools. Pending availability of funds.
Maximum 25 students per residency. Exceptions may be possible — contact us to discuss. A mileage fee applies for schools outside Chittenden County. Residencies run November through April, with the Festival each May.
Register Your School
Residencies run November through April. Sign up now to secure your school's spot. Questions? Contact Education Coordinator Shoshannah at shoshannah@vermontstage.org or 802-862-1497.
Support This Program
Make A gift
Donate to Arts Education
A gift to our Arts Education programs underwrites actor fees, travel expenses, and school scholarships, enabling Public Square Plays to reach more Vermont students and create a forum for civic conversation in schools across the state.
Education Equity Fund
Sponsor a School
Vermont Stage's Education Equity Fund provides scholarships to Title I and rural under-resourced schools that want to participate but can't afford to without extra help. Your gift lets us say yes to more schools.
Our three education programs cost approximately $100,000 annually to produce. School fees cover about half of that. The rest comes from donations and grants. If you'd like to help us reach more Vermont students, we'd be grateful for your support.
Our Education Programs Sponsors
The Flat Rock Fund
George W. Mergens Foundation
Goode Family Foundation
