Theatre alum Liba Vaynberg has been selected as one of two playwrights for the 2025 Roundabout Underground Playwright Residency. This competitive residency is designed to recognize outstanding new playwrights and give them unique opportunities, time, and space to develop their work.
Through this residency, Vaynberg will have the opportunity to workshop one of her plays, the process culminating in a multi-day workshop of the piece. She also has full access to Roundabout resources, Roundabout staff, and a workspace to be shared with the other selected playwright, Iraisa Ann Reilly.
Vaynberg received a Molecular Biology degree from Yale University before receiving her MFA in Acting from Columbia. In a 2017 interview with They Create, she explained that, “I always knew I wanted to do theater; I was really scared to do theater of any kind because the odds were so stacked against me to be an artist. I’m Jewish, so my parents were like ‘You have to be a doctor.’ And I was the oldest daughter of three sisters in my family, so all the immigrant cultural barrier pressure was very present.
“I sort of let myself get in my own way a little bit because I was like, ‘You know what, it’s very unlikely that I would succeed as an artist’—just thinking about it from a mathematical or quantitative perspective. So I thought ‘I’ll go to a school that has a strong arts program, but I will be a pre-med just in case.’ What I realized though is that when you stack up your day, there’s no such thing as a contingency plan because what you spend most of your day doing is who you are...You can’t be an artist in your free time. You’re not an artist unless you’re an artist. It’s that simple.”
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 Theater. 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 non-profit devoted to female leadership in and through the arts.
