Assorted ramblings from the world of entertainment:

• Youngstown Playhouse has picked four local African-American playwrights to feature at its inaugural Juneteenth Festival of New Works.

The Playhouse offered free workshops last fall at the McGuffey Center in Youngstown as part of its 100th anniversary season, and participants learned playwriting skills.

The winners were announced at intermission Sunday during the final performance of the Playhouse’s production of August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.”

First place and a $300 cash prize went to Torah Adams-Lewis. Ariel Alli and Michele Day tied for second place and each received $200, and Ramona Austin won third place and $100.

All four winners will have staged readings of their work as part of the Juneteenth Festival of New Works, with performances on June 19 at the Playhouse and June 20 at the McGuffey Center.

• I might have gotten a little carried away with the interview with Steven Van Zandt in today’s section to preview his lecture Tuesday at Stambaugh Auditorium.

What can I say? Van Zandt is a talker, and it’s not often I get a chance to spend more than 45 minutes talking to someone so integral to so much music I’ve loved over 50 years.

Before I talked to Van Zandt, I talked to John Anthony of The Vindys, who not only uses Van Zandt’s Teach Rock program with his students in Austintown, but also has developed some of the lessons.

Anthony discovered Teach Rock, a STEAM-based curriculum that uses popular music to instill a passion for learning with students, when he went to a presentation in 2018.

“It was mind-blowing,” Anthony said. “I had no idea about it. I met with the guy that gave the presentation (and told him), ‘Hey, I’d love to write for you guys.'”

He created a couple of lessons in 2019 for a Grateful Dead collection and more recently produced a Jimi Hendrix lesson.

He’s also worked as a lesson consultant, offering advice on how to adapt lessons originally created for high school students to use with younger children.

Working with the program has benefited Anthony in his own teaching.

“It’s made me more aware of how I could tie in that whole cross-curricular thing (using music to teach history, science and other subjects), which is one thing that they really promote,” Anthony said. “And it really has helped me to think more creatively and then obviously impacted me in the classroom.”

Another element that Anthony likes about Teach Rock is that it provides fully formed lessons that teachers can use, even if rock and popular music aren’t the genres with which they are most familiar.

That’s particularly beneficial with what Anthony calls “By the way” classes, referring to when teachers are informed shortly before the start of the school year, “Oh, by the way, we need you to teach this …”

“I study this stuff, I know this stuff, I love this stuff,” Anthony said. “I’ve gone as far as being a bit involved in this world. There are music teachers that don’t have the same passion, and that’s OK. They have their own thing — classical music or jazz music or something else, Broadway music.

“A lot of schools are turning to history of rock ‘n’ roll classes now, so this is a great way for teachers who don’t have that experience, don’t have the knowledge or the background. This is just a foolproof curriculum that not only educates the teacher so they know what they’re talking about but then also educates the students as well.”

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com