Dear Playbill readers,

As you may have heard, there have been some changes here at Playbill. After seven years, editor in chief Blake Ross has departed for new challenges, and so now I’m stepping in as the company’s fourth editor in chief in the last 40 years, 13 years after my time as a Playbill intern.

As for my theatrical bona fides: I’ve been covering the theatre over the last decade and specifically at Backstage Magazine for the last four-and-a-half years, first while helping to redesign the magazine and website and then as editor in chief. But long before that, I was growing up in a small town in Texas, taping the Tony Awards on my VCR so I could rewatch the performances all year long, making my family listen to the cast recordings of The Will Rogers Follies, The Music Man, and Sweet Charity on road trips and dancing in a community theatre production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

So I’m a fan, yes, but I’m the type of fan who wants to know more. And I want you, the Playbill reader, to know more, too. We’re living in a thrilling era, where the Tony Awards post videos to YouTube and plays are being recorded and broadcast in HD and the movers and shakers and makers are accessible and excited to engage in conversations about their craft. I can’t think of a better time to love the theatre—and I can’t think of a more exciting time to come to Playbill and build on the last 150 years of serving and loving the theatre, whether it’s on our Broadway on the High Seas cruises, online, or under that iconic yellow and black cover. To paraphrase Noël Coward, I’ve just come to a marvelous party. And I hope you’ll have as good a time as I will.