Performance Rights: Checkmate
PLAY: Checkmate (2021)
PLAYWRIGHT: Lauren Noble
CAST: 8
CHARACTERS: The King, Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight and three Pawns
SCRIPT: 9 pages
RUNNING TIME: 12-15 minutes
LICENSE: Full performance rights
Checkmate is a devised theatre production which follows the fragmented narrative of a collection of chess pieces as they play their way across an oversized chessboard on stage. Throughout the game the backline pieces are compelled to reclaim ownership over their own identities, struggling to establish new roles by attempting to manipulate the rules of the game yet never fully realising that it is those very rules that bind them to their old roles in the first place. The play is set-up with each monologue of the backline characters, not quite black and not quite white, layered with dance, gesture, movement, and a host of intertextual references which leave the audience wondering about the three submissive frontline pieces who appear to have lost their muchness.
Visit our playbill page for Checkmate here to discover more about the orignal production.
