Marcus Scott, the author of this issue’s feature on playwriting programs that include training in other media, recalls beginning the 2010s by receiving his undergraduate degree, then starting a grad program. “Perhaps it was kismet taking on this assignment; now at the dawn of a new decade, I’m thinking of going back to graduate school, this time to earn a more formal and comprehensive education in playwriting and screenwriting,” says Scott, a New York City-based playwright, musical theatre writer, teaching artist, and journalist. “Listening to these prolific storytellers,” he says, “I felt like I got a peek behind the desk that few will ever have, and finding the words to articulate that was a learning experience.”

Miami-based arts writer and editor Jordan Levin, who served as staff critic at the Miami Herald for 18 years, has been “captivated” by breakdancer-turned-playwright Rudi Goblen since she first interviewed him, when Goblen was 23, starting out in theatre with Teo Castellanos/D-Projects. “His originality, his astonishing capacity for artistic growth and self-invention, and his integrity have always impressed me.” She says she’s been gratified to cover “how Rudi has taken those qualities into writing and thea-tre, all the way to Yale, and to see how his qualities have aligned with their graduate program in playwriting. Me and everyone else in Miami’s performing arts community are rooting for Rudi—and looking forward to the rest of the world discovering him.”