Each playwright\u2019s reasoning for tackling one of the U.S.\u2019s longest and most complex conflicts was unique, but they shared the sentiment that it was simply too rife with dramatic tension to resist. \u201cThere’s something about the era where the stakes are so high,\u201d said Strong. \u201cThere was this constant fear that the world could be destroyed at any moment. But it was also a time of clever cunning between spies. It wasn’t a period of big battles and mass death. Instead, you had the KGB and the CIA and subterfuge, which makes it feel rich and ripe for theatricality and drama.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But the big red button was never pushed, and the Cold War remained cold, though we know that only in hindsight. As Strong was writing the book for Chess\u2019s first Broadway revival \u2014 in which a Cold War chess match between the Soviet Union and the United States mirrors the countries’ geopolitical tensions \u2014 he relished the modern perspective because the original production didn\u2019t have the luxury of retrospect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had originally written and done this show in the middle of the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, and so my thought was, ‘Let’s turn this into a Cold War history play,’\u201d said Strong. \u201cLet’s tell the story of the Cold War in a way they couldn’t because they were living it.\u201d So Strong latched onto real events around which to set the chess match, like the negotiation of the SALT II Treaty that sought to limit the production of nuclear weapons, and a war exercise that almost caused the launch of a real nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n
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Reddick also centered her exploration around notable historical checkpoints, namely the 1987 signing of the INF Treaty, which required the U.S. and Soviet Union to eliminate all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles. \u201cI wanted [Cold War Choir Practice] to be set before the U.S. had really figured out if they could trust Gorbachev,\u201d she says. \u201cThere was still a little bit of distrust, even if we weren’t in the tensest part of the Cold War.\u201d That distrust became the linchpin of Reddick\u2019s play, which is largely told from the perspective of her 10-year-old protagonist \u2014 a stand-in for children like Reddick whose perception of the Cold War was one of uncertainty and naivet\u00e9. \u201cI found it really generative to think about the family dynamics that show up in the play and what this young person is asked to consider and navigate at the age of 10,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Reddick’s source of inspiration was contemporary, however. \u201cPutin invaded Ukraine [in 2022], and I was thinking a lot about the renewed nuclear threat \u2014 if it ever left,\u201d she explained. \u201cEveryone was talking about a new Cold War.\u201d So she drew parallels between what she was grappling with in her adulthood and those childhood fears. \u201cI’m just trying to make sense of things. I want us all to try to make sense of this together, and this is just my lens.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Where Strong\u2019s Chess stays firmly grounded in espionage, the tone of Reddick\u2019s piece takes surrealist twists and turns; a Soviet-hacked Speak & Spell toy sent from a pen pal contributes to Cold War Choir Practice\u2019s tension. Yee\u2019s Mother Russia tends toward a similar silliness to process the era, though she\u2019s set her script a few years post-conflict, as two men from different Soviet social strata seek out their places in the new normal. At one point, they share a rare McDonald\u2019s Filet-o-Fish with such glee and desperation that they end up licking each other\u2019s fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was drawn to a world where it felt like things were opening \u2014 where all of a sudden there was opportunity where there hadn’t been before, and how slippery that was,\u201d Yee said. It\u2019s a theme she returns to often; she\u2019s previously explored different iterations of communism in Cambodian Rock Band and The Great Leap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s this fascination with regime changes,\u201d said Yee. \u201cWe\u2019re caught in things politically where you’re just like, this feels like our waking nightmare and we’re going to be in this situation forever, which is probably how people felt during the Cold War. And then to suddenly have that flip, for better or worse, that feels very relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n
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And while there are clear contemporary associations, Yee began writing the show in 2017, initially drawing her story\u2019s parallels to the Obama era. \u201cAll of a sudden there’s all this openness and there’s a new way of doing things, and you’re telling me all our problems are gone and we should rejoice. But there’s still plenty that is going wrong in this new system. All your problems are not gone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The fact that all three plays share a season is too prescient to be coincidence, even though all three have had such different development processes. \u201cThere’s a certain romantic quality and a nostalgia for the Cold War,\u201d said Strong. And while Yee agrees, she also thinks they have a forward-looking benefit as well. \u201cStories around communism, to me, feel a little bit like a warning of what can happen when suspicion and mistrust and particular ways of viewing each other narrow our generosity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Because, as the cliche goes, history repeats itself, and that\u2019s never more obvious than in watching a history play. Yee personifies this notion with her play\u2019s title character, an omniscient, sardonic embodiment of the truths of history brought to bear. Mother Russia gripes and groans about the fools she sees striving for better \u2014 she knows they\u2019ll fail as so many have before them, yet they continue to try. It\u2019s true of all the characters in Chess, Cold War Choir Practice, and Mother Russia. Hope and despair live side by side, but the jokes hit a little differently when they\u2019re a bit too close to home. They couldn\u2019t possibly drop the bomb on us this time, right?<\/p>\n
Get Chess tickets<\/a> now.<\/p>\n