Founded in 1999 as a response to the Columbine tragedy hoping to bring more positive attention to teenagers engaged in creative pursuits, The Cappies (Critics and Awards Program) is an international program for recognizing, celebrating, and providing learning experiences for high school theater and journalism students and teenage playwrights. There are currently 13 Cappies programs in the U.S. and Canada, which range in size from five to 60 participating high schools. Within each program, every participating high school selects three to nine students for a critic team. After receiving extensive training in theater criticism and review writing, they attend plays and musicals at other high schools in their area. They write reviews (of roughly 400 words) on deadline. Volunteer teacher-mentors lead discussions and select the critic-written reviews that are later published by area newspapers, with student bylines.