New Musical THE OPENING to Premiere at the Players Theatre
The Opening is loosely inspired by a viral meme that emerged from the shocking 2022 chess scandal.
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The Opening, a new musical by Brooke di Spirito and Mateo Chavez Lewis, is set to premiere in a strictly limited engagement at The Players Theatre from January 8 - February 8, 2026, with an opening set for Sunday, January 11. The Opening is loosely inspired by a viral meme that emerged from the shocking 2022 chess scandal, in which a chess player was wrongfully accused of cheating via a vibrating buttplug. Directed by Nick Flatto (Stranger Sings!), The Opening takes its inspiration from this story.
In The Opening, Newton Anderson, a 17-year-old chess prodigy, is facing the greatest player in the world: Carson Marlsen. With international notoriety and $100,000 on the line, Newton and his clueless Best Friend, Jim, hatch an...unconventional...plan to cheat. Hilarious hijinks ensue. As the Chess World Championship looms, this bro-comedy meets coming-of-age story asks audiences: just how far would you be willing to go for a dream?
The cast of The Opening includes Jake Faragalli (Elf, Papermill), Rylee Carpenter (Local Singles, Off-Broadway); along with the Off-Broadway debuts of Ryan Jacobs, Gordon Rothman, Harrison O'Callaghan, and many more.
When asked how they first came up with the idea to make this meme into a musical, the writing duo shared that they originally wrote up the pitch as a joke...but it got so many laughs in their writers' group, they knew they had to write it. As evidenced by the many Reddit threads that exploded the second this show was made public, a lot of people are curious to see this scandal hit the stage. Unrelated to Chess on Broadway, but coincidentally running at the same time, the Opening's official tagline is "the second most famous musical about chess".
The Opening was the recipient of The Players Theatre Off-Broadway residency award. It was previously workshopped at the Dramatists Guild via the Musical Creators Institute. Both of the writers are proud members of the BMI Lehman Engel Workshop. The Opening's team includes an additional five current members of the BMI workshop.
The creative team for The Opening includes Joe Brauch (co-music director), Miguel Sutedjo (co-music director), Brian Wedeking (scenic and sound design), Mateo Chavez Lewis (orchestrations), Brooke di Spirito (choreographer), and Naomi Schwartzburt (production stage manager).
