We are very grateful to Stuart Harris, founder of the Hamnet Players, whose pioneering activities we document in this paper, for sharing his experience and materials with us, and for enabling us to take part in a unique enterprise. This research was presented at a conference, "Science Fiction or Reality? Communication, Culture and Society on the Internet," hosted by the Smart Family Institute of Communication Research, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, June 11, 1995. The present paper was drafted while Brenda Danet was a scholar in residence at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center, Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy, during the month of July, 1995. Run by the Rockefeller Foundation, this residence is an academic's dream come true, combining freedom from the pressures of daily life with the beautiful surroundings of the Villa, Bellagio and Lake Como, and the companionship of scholars from all over the world.

One group, led by Mara Rosenberg, formerly at the State University of New York at Poukeepsie, has been attempting to develop a production of Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night's Dream, in which the dream world is cyberspace itself. Another group, led by Steve Schrum uses the COLLAB-L discussion list as a forum for some of its discussions; this group is attempting to create an online adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis. Aspiring to realize its production entirely online, the latter group comes closer to the achievements to be documented and analyzed in this paper, though their activities are still only in the planning stages, as this paper was completed, whereas the Hamnet Players have six performances behind them. add vt stuff in Eudora.