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Last update: Thursday August 10, 2006 12:33
Lazy Bee Scripts are publishing
online 11 One-Act Plays written by me on Chess Games.
One-Act Plays based on Historical Chess Games
The game of Chess has always been connected with the practise of war, from its ancient beginning. The words "check-mate," signifying victory in Chess, is a corruption of the Persian, " Shah Mauth," meaning 'the King is Dead.' Chess Players use terminology that would be familiar to military strategists. Many generals have gone on record that their skills have been honed on the Chessboard. But in reality Chess is a mind-game, and its stratagems, and moves can parallel human contests in any field of engagement.
Varadachary's Annotated Chess Masterpieces [Incomplete], of around 39,000 words, contains eleven One-Act Plays [about 30 to 40 minutes each] with fictionalized whimsical-humorous dialogues around actual chess games played by famous people. A fictional centenarian Indian chess enthusiast, who has led a very chequered life, introduces each of the plays, linking them with incidents from his own life.
The games turned into plays are:
1. Alekhine vs Table 11 [ simultaneous blindfold tournament] Paris, 1925 - Alekhine, the great Russian Chess champion of all time, sacrifices his Queen and loses because he falls in love with a beautiful student.
2. Napoleon vs General Bertrand, St. Helena, 1818 - Napoleon links every move he makes to a famous victory of his.
3. Marcel Duchamp vs Georges Koltanowsi, Paris, 1929 - Duchamp the famous dadaist artist explains to the Belgian chess champion how his artistic masterpiece, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Nine Suitors, Even, helped him win in chess.
4. Sultan Khan vs Frederick Yates, London, 1933 - Sultan Khan manservant to a Nawab beats British Champion during the Round Table Conferences in London on Indian self-rule, by following the satyagraha of the Indian Freedom Struggle.
5. Albert Einstein vs Robert Oppenheimer, Princeton - Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Chandrasekhar, astrophysicist, meet one afternoon in Einstein's apartment in Princeton just before World War II, and while playing the game decide Oppenheimer would be the best man to lead development of the Atom Bomb.
6.Humphrey Bogart vs Lauren Bacall, Los Angeles - Bogie gets Bacall to say 'yes.'
7. Fidel Castro vs Filiberto Terrazas, Havana, 1966 - The chess game as part of the victorious Cuban revolution.
8. El Greco, the first chess master, vs Anonymous, early 17th century - It is suggested that the game was actually played by the elder El Greco, the artist, against Duke Medina-Sidonia, just before he led the ill-fated Spanish Armada against England.
9. Karl Marx vs Meyer, Berlin, 1867 - A Bollywood Mogul, inspired by the success of an Indian film based on cricket, decides to make a film on Das Kapital around this game.
10. Claude Bloodgood vs a guard of the Virginia State Penitentiary - How the game helps the lifer escape.
11. LeoTolstoy vs Alymer Maude - with a discussion between the spirits of Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy in heaven on how Non-Violence can lead to victory even in chess.
Dr. Vithal Rajan
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