Visions & Voices Playwriting Residency

The Visions and Voices Playwriting Residency is a program created to promote literacy and writing skills, as well as a love for the theatre. The festival began in 2016 as a partnership with Bedford Road School in Pleasantville, and has added more schools and grades to the program each year! Arc Stages has partnered with Pocantico Hills School, Bedford Hills Elementary, Pleasantville Middle School, Mt. Kisco Elementary, Grafflin Elementary, Todd Elementary, West Patent Elementary, Meadow Pond Elementary, Thomas Cornell Academy, Traphagen School, Kenneth Clark Academy, Lincoln Titus Elementary, Denzel Washington School of the Arts and Sacred Heart Greenwich, with the hope to reach even more schools and students in the future. We hope to launch the High School component of Visions and Voices this year!

Through the Visions & Voices Playwriting Residency, students are introduced to the world of the stage and self-expression, as well as to excite and inspire them to write plays. This program helps develop creativity and literacy competencies and also supports the common core through integration of our workshops and exercises with the ELA curriculum map and teaching plans of the teachers. 

Visions and Voices is a BOCES-accredited program, supported by ArtsWestchester.

Major Project Activities

The project engages with students and teachers over the course of several months. Visions and Voices may be delivered virtually, if it is not possible to meet in person for the particular school.

Stage I – FALL

Participating classes visit Arc Stages. The students see a performance of inspirational short plays (45 min), written by children who have previously participated in the playwriting program. This visit includes a theatre games session with elements introducing the elements of storytelling and playwriting structure. 

Stage II – WINTER

Arc Stages visits classes at their school to present a 30 minute show about playwriting. This is an interactive musical about how to write a play. After the show, the Teaching Artists go into the classrooms to work with the students on playwriting skills. Teaching Artists help students to begin to write short plays (1-3 pages). These workshops would last a class period (50 minutes-1 hour). 

Stage III – WINTER

Teaching Artists return two weeks later for a Revision workshop in each classroom, helping students to deepen their work. After students have finished revising their plays, they submit them to Arc Stages for consideration for the Playwriting Festival!

Stage IV – SPRING

Classes return to Arc Stages to view the selected plays from the submissions that the students wrote. The plays are performed by professional actors on the theatre stage (1 hour show) with a talk back with the actors after the show (15 min).

The Bows

The selected playwrights return to Arc Stages for a special viewing of their selected plays and an Awards Ceremony, to receive their awards for being selected playwrights. An honored guest – an award winning playwright, Broadway performer, or local government official – will present the students their awards. Media may be present for this special evening.

Every student who submits a play, whether it is selected to be performed or not, receives an award for having the courage to write!

Play by Adrienne Grunspan from the first Visions and Voices Playwriting Festival in 2016.