CHESS The Musical

Chess is a show of scale, tension, politics, spectacle, and emotional isolation, so I wanted the scenic world to feel bold, controlled, and transformable. Rather than building a heavily literal collection of locations, I designed a single large white set that could become anything through projection.

The architecture itself was intentionally simple and strong: a large second level with walkways and stairs on…

Chess is a show of scale, tension, politics, spectacle, and emotional isolation, so I wanted the scenic world to feel bold, controlled, and transformable. Rather than building a heavily literal collection of locations, I designed a single large white set that could become anything through projection.

The architecture itself was intentionally simple and strong: a large second level with walkways and stairs on either side, open space beneath the upper deck, a central vertical projection surface, and a downstage riser that extended from the base of the screen into the playing space. Performers could appear on the upper level, pass underneath it, descend from either side, and play across multiple levels without the need for major scenic shifts.

The visual complexity came from the projection system. Every part of the set was mapped individually, which meant I could turn the same structure into radically different environments throughout the show. I designed all of the projection content myself, including the full set of graphics, textures, and scene imagery. Because the entire set was white, it became an ideal surface for projection and allowed the visuals to feel clean, crisp, and completely integrated into the architecture.

The central 9.5-foot-wide screen became a major compositional feature, especially because it extended into an 8-inch riser at floor level. That downstage reveal allowed for a particularly effective staging moment in the chess-match scene, where the table could rotate as the game progressed. We used that effect sparingly so it would retain its impact, and it became one of the production’s most memorable visual devices.

One of the things I’m most proud of in this design is that the projection mapping was not limited to a backdrop. It wrapped the entire environment. Individual steps, pillars, edges, and levels were all configured as part of the system, which made the whole set feel alive and gave the production enormous visual range without needing large physical scene changes.

This was an ambitious concept, technically demanding to execute, and very successful in performance.