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Alekhine's Greatest Defeat by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 4. Minimum Female roles = 1. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 5. Chorus. The characters include Ramanujan Varadachary, an old Indian story-teller - a sutradhari, as he is called in Indian drama tradition and his younger self in the 1920s. The (non-speaking) chorus comprises student chess players in 1920s Paris. |
Run Time | Around 25 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Split-stage set, simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game One in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. Varadachary, the story teller, relates how he witnessed Russian Grand Master Alexander Alekhine fall in love whilst losing a chess match in Paris to a beautiful student. |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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Apple Strudel, Chess and Ethics by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 0. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 5. No chorus. |
Run Time | Around 30 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game Five in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. Albert Einstein challenges J. Robert Oppenheimer to a chess match, with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar looking on, as they discuss physics and ethics in the lead-up to the Manhattan Project. |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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Chess as Felony by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 0. Minimum total with doubling = 3. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. |
Run Time | Around 20 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game Ten in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. Convicts Claude Bloodgood and Ram Varadachary take a train with their guard to a chess tournament, but on the train they play a game for high stakes. |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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The Emperor's Last Victory by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 4. Minimum Female roles = 1. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 5. No chorus. The characters are Ramanujan Varadachary, an old Indian story-teller - a sutradhari, as he is called in Indian drama tradition, an Indian museum curator, the Emperor Napoleon, Napoleon's Aide de camp and his wife. |
Run Time | Around 30 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game Two in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. Napoleon, exiled on St. Helena, uses a chess game with Bertrand, his aid de camp, to review his career, philosophy and military strategy. |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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The Filming of Das Kapital by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 0. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 7. No chorus. Two of the characters make a brief non-speaking appearance (and therefore could be regarded as optional). |
Run Time | Around 25 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game Nine in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. A Bollywood producer has plans to make a film of the life of Karl Marx, part of which is played out through a chess game. An amateur theatre group - including the author! - runs through the script (and the chess game), criticising the producer's distortions of history! |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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The Heretic Queen by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 0. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. Two of the characters are boys (age unspecified). |
Run Time | Around 30 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game Eight in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. The painter El Greco challenges the Lord High Admiral of the Spanish navy to a chess match on the eve of the launch of the Armada to invade Queen Elizabeth's England. (The other El Greco - the chess master - takes notes!) |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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The Love Gambit by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 1. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. |
Run Time | Around 20 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game Six in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. Varadachary recalls New Years Eve, 1944 when Humphrey Bogart challenged Lauren Bacall to a chess match - and much more. |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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The Parable of the Chess Game by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 0. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 5. No chorus. |
Run Time | Around 25 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game Eleven in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. Varadachary, revolutionary and storyteller, coming to the end of his life, receives a lesson in non-violent revolution from the spirits of his gurus, Ghandi and Tolstoy. |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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A Servant Plays for High Stakes by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 8. Minimum Female roles = 0. Minimum total with doubling = 7. Minimum total without doubling = 8. No chorus. |
Run Time | Around 30 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | A combination of Indian storytelling and chess! Simple props, but needs a means of displaying the chess moves to the audience. |
Synopsis | Game Four in the Varadachary Chess Cycle. British Chess Champion Sultan Khan recreates his 1932 defeat of Frederick Yates as an allegory for Gandhi's non-violent resistance to British colonial occupation of India. |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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The Spartan Conspiracy by Vithal Rajan |
Roles | Minimum Male roles = 4. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 9. Minimum total without doubling = 9. No chorus. |
Run Time | Around 35 minutes. [Estimated!] |
Music | None. |
Style | One-act satire. |
Synopsis | Menelaus, Ulysses and Agamemnon meet with Achilles to discuss the disastrous rise in the price of Olive Oil, instigated by the Trojans. How can they prompt a war with Troy to combat the oil price? Then they send for Helen... |
Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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