Liba Vaynberg’s “The Blue Parts”: world premiere Off-Broadway marks the return of Roundabout Underground

New York, September 30, 2026 — Roundabout Theatre Company announced the return of the Roundabout Underground program this season with the world premiere of the play “The Blue Parts,” written by playwright Liba Vaynberg, as Playbill reports. Lee Sunday Evans directs, while the work was originally commissioned by Working Theatre through its “Five Boroughs/One City” initiative.

The play is described as a distinctive and intimate story of migration to and from Brighton Beach. A powerful storm traps Marina in her video cassette shop together with a teenager collecting signatures for the “Save The Whales” campaign, and the two are forced to bridge the gulf between them — as vast and alive as the Atlantic Ocean.

Previews begin on February 18, 2027, the official opening is set for March 11, while the limited-engagement performances will run until April 18, 2027, at the Black Box Theatre of the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. The cast and additional creative team will be announced later.

“Roundabout Underground was born from Todd Haimes’s belief that young artists deserve the space and resources to take risks and develop their voices,” artistic director Christopher Ashley said in a statement. To mark the program’s return, tickets will be pay-what-you-wish — the audience pays as it can, starting from $10.

Liba Vaynberg, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Azerbaijan, is a bilingual (English–Russian) playwright and actress, a Yale graduate in molecular biology with an MFA from Columbia. “The Blue Parts” was developed in close collaboration with the communities of Brighton Beach and represents, according to its creators, the vivid and urgent experiences of immigrant communities that rarely see themselves on the main stages.