CHESS the Musical comes to Kayenta
Almost thirty-five years after the release of the original concept album, and the Broadway play, Chess the Musical comes to Center for the Arts at Kayenta November 10-19, 2022.
Chess is a rock musical with a strategic battle of wits, love, and deception. The story involves a politically driven, Cold War-era chess tournament between two grandmasters, one American and the other Soviet, and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. Although the protagonists were not intended to represent any real individuals, the character of the American grandmaster is loosely based on Bobby Fischer, and elements of the story may have been inspired by the chess careers of Russian grandmasters Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov.
Chess allegorically reflected the Cold War tensions present in the 1980s. The musical has been referred to as a metaphor for the whole Cold War, with the insinuation being made that the Cold War is itself a manipulative game. Released and staged at the height of the strong anti-communist agenda, Chess addressed and satirized the hostility of the international political atmosphere of the 1980s.
A highly successful concept album was released in the autumn of 1984 while the show opened in London’s West End in 1986 where it played for three years. A much-altered US version premiered on Broadway in 1988 with a book by Richard Nelson. The songs in Chess combines disco and rap, pop and rock, academic music and chorales and include such worldwide hits as One Night in Bangkok and I Know Him So Well.
CHESS the Musical runs from November 10th through the 19th, 2022 @ 7:30 PM at the Center for the Arts at Kayenta
Tickets are $35 or adults, and children and students are just $10
Visit www.KayentaArts.com for more information.
