Alum Liba Vaynberg’s new play The Blue Parts is set to make its world premiere as part of Roundabout Theatre’s Roundabout Underground program. The show will begin previews on February 18, 2027, in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre.
Roundabout Underground is a unique program used to showcase the work of talented playwrights. Roundabout Artistic Director Christopher Ashley shared in a statement that “Roundabout Underground grew from Todd Haimes’s belief that emerging artists deserve the space and resources to take risks and develop their voices. With the support of our Board and our entire team, it became a home where writers early in their careers could see their work fully produced.”
The Blue Parts was originally commissioned by Working Theatre. When a powerful storm traps Marina in her store with a teenager petitioning to save the whales, they have to swim the gulf between them, as vast and alive as the Atlantic Ocean. The Blue Parts is a singular, intimate tale of migration to and from Brighton Beach. It is being directed by Lee Sunday Evans.
Vaynberg shared her excitement to be working with Roundabout and the entire creative team: “I'm incredibly excited to be working on this piece with Lee and with a theater I've loved and admired for so long and to have my next play commissioned with them. Nicole and Abby and Jean Carlo and Jillian and Chris are an unbelievable team who herald in so much creativity and innovation for American theater. I feel so, so lucky, in particular to be telling a story that makes use of my first language as a Russian-speaker and deepens some of the lived experiences of immigrants like my parents.”
Vaynberg is a first-generation American writer and actor. She studied molecular biology at Yale before receiving her MFA at Columbia. Her plays include The Matriarchs, The Gett, and Round Table. Her first play, Scheiss Book, premiered at the United Solo Festival at Theatre Row where it won Best One-Woman Show as well as the Backstage Magazine Audience Choice Award, and was reprised by Dixon Place, Wild Project (with Wheelhouse), and Stonewall Inn with a regional premiere at the Kitchen Theatre. She has been a Walter E. Dakin Fellow at Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a member of the Civilians R&D Group, and an Artist-in-Residence with Colt Coeur. She is also the co-founder of Anna & Kitty, Inc., a nonprofit devoted to female leadership in and through the arts. She has also attended the Sundance Institute with her pilot Loupe about the Diamond District. Her play Werewolves was showcased at IAMA New Works Fest in LA.
