Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, President/CEO, in memoriam; Scott Ellis, Interim Artistic Dir) has announced artistic selections for The Refocus Project and Roundabout Underground programs, both newly revamped for 2025. Both projects are dedicated to recognizing outstanding playwrights; Refocus by restoring formerly marginalized plays and writers to the American canon, and the Underground by elevating new artists and offering them significant development opportunities. The Refocus Spotlight Artists is the next phase of Roundabout's efforts to expand the American theatre canon. Building on three years of offering readings from the Black American, Latinx, and AAPI communities, this season Roundabout will concentrate on two artists, Migdalia Cruz and William S Yellow Robe, Jr. This new approach will attempt to curate a deeper dive into the lives and careers of two artists of color whose names should be more familiar in American theatre history. Roundabout will explore Cruz and Yellow Robe’s work through readings and panels and create an in-depth resource guides dedicated to the Spotlight Artists. These opportunities and resources will be shared with theatres, schools, and audiences both in NYC and nationwide, with the goals of encouraging more productions of their work and placement on theatre syllabi. Roundabout Underground exists to foster artistic risk-taking that may not be viable on RTC’s larger stages--by producing the debuts of emerging writers, creating opportunities for experienced directors to go back to basics, and by providing a nurturing, cost-free environment where writers can, simply, write. This year the Roundabout Underground Residencies will be introduced to provide two playwrights - Vichet Chum and Nikki Massoud - with time and space to work on one of their plays. Each writer will have scheduled time at a desk in a shared workspace, a multi-day workshop of the play, and access to Roundabout resources and staff that they feel is helpful to their process and overall artistic development. For more information, please visit www.roundabouttheatre.org. Press contact: Polk & Co (917/261-3988)...