The Night I Learned to Play Chess (RE-POST from 8/8/15)

Enjoy this re-post from 8/8/15! The production I reference in this blog post opens next weekend. If you are in the Boise area and would like to see it, tickets are available online at www.mtionline.org.

 

Once upon a time, a kid I used to babysit tried to teach me to play chess. Because he was eight and had the attention span of a Labrador puppy, he just laughed at me when I didn't remember all of the crazy rules.

Fast forward twenty-plus years, I have been cast in a musical called Chess about a Cold War chess tournament between a Russian and an American (Boris Spassky vs. Bobby Fischer, anyone?). My character in the show is the American player's "second," a sort of assistant who researches opponents and helps prepare strategies. And if the first player dies (I guess a chess match can last so long that the game outlives the players), it's up to the second to finish the player's chess commitments.

Disclaimer: I am going to make light of something that I have realized some people take very seriously. I might even simplify some definitions. A while back, I posted a glib Facebook message about two guys playing chess next to me in a coffee shop, and I immediately received how-to-play-chess links and words of caution about orienting the chess board correctly on stage because apparently chess aficionados care a lot about these things.

So . . . no angry e-mails about how I truly don't understand the chess experience.

"I should teach you how to play chess," said (guess who?) none other than my husband, Dan, when I was cast in the role.

He was much more patient than that eight-year-old I babysat.

He taught me terms like en passant, promotion, check, and checkmate, none of which I execute successfully yet. Sometimes though, I yell out "En passant!" mid-game just for fun.

He taught me "white on the right," meaning that the white square should be to the right of the opponent playing the white pieces, and the queen is on its own color for both players. How's that for orientation, friends?

There's also this thing called "castling," and it sounds totally dirty but it's not because . . . well . . . it's chess, and as the American player says at one point in the musical, "I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine." (Get it? Chess players are too cerebral to bother with . . . you know what?) But "castling" is my new code word for "sex."

I've also gained a perspective on some of the vocabulary in the musical. I've learned the arbiter is a sort of referee.

When one character refers to a gambit (an opening in which a player makes a sacrifice, typically a pawn, for the sake of some compensating advantage), are we talking about a literal gambit, or are the people the sacrificed pawns in this case?

A chess game is divided into three parts, an opening, middlegame, and endgame. It just so happens that "Endgame" is also the title of a four-part song at the end of the show. It signifies the end of the chess match, but it also serves as a metaphor for the Russian players' psyche when he has to make an ultimate, definitive choice.

I learned how to move each chess piece, which is much more complicated than checkers.

Dan quizzes me before each game on each "character"—Dan: "chess piece"—and how it moves.

Me: "This is the horse"—Dan: "knight"—"and it moves in an L-shape, two squares to one, and it can jump over 'characters'"—Dan: "chess pieces."

Me (after the game): "That was kind of fun."

Dan: "It takes a lot of strategy. I can only think one or two moves ahead."

Me: "I can only think of how to get away from you and, even then, I'm not so successful."

So far, Dan has beaten me every time.

 If you are in the Boise area this fall and would like to see Chess the Musical, here are the dates:

September 10-12 at 7:30 pm & September 12 at 1:30 pm

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