How a Kiwi film night led to a Prague premiere
When people ask where A Czech Gambit began, Russell does not start with a rehearsal room. He starts with a New Zealand film night and a copy of The Dark Horse. The film tells the true story of chess coach Genesis Potini, played by Cliff Curtis, and a youth club in Kaiti, Gisborne that he helped to guide toward national competition.
Intrigued by the community mentor in the story, Noble Keelan, Russell tracked him down in 2018 and travelled to Gisborne. Keelan had co-founded the Eastern Knights club with Potini and continued to support local rangatahi through chess. The visit turned a powerful film into living people and places, and it planted a seed for a stage work about courage, care and change.
A few years later, an invitation from Prague created a new connection. Russell met Petr Boleslav, the director of the Prague International Chess Festival, and a simple suggestion followed, write a play with a chess heartbeat. The idea needed a life to carry it, and that life was Lubomír Kavalek.
Kavalek’s biography read like theatre. Born in 1943, he fled the Soviet invasion in 1968, rebuilt his life and career in the United States, and became a grandmaster, writer and coach of global standing. The arc included flight, reunion and the costs of freedom, and it moved from intimate rooms to historic streets. Russell drafted one act, shared it with theatre colleagues in Prague, then completed the play.
A Czech Gambit was staged in Prague. Kavalek had died in 2021, yet his widow, son and grandson travelled from the United States to attend, which turned a chain of coincidences into a family moment and gave the premiere a quiet grace.
Read more about the play on Waikato Times
Why now
Because the choices people make under pressure still define the rest of their lives. Chess reveals those choices move by move, and theatre lets us feel the cost.
Interested in staging the play
Scripts and staging notes are available for schools, community groups and professional companies. Send message to Russell to recieve reading copy and performance guidelines (address in the footer).