Tesla's Letters
by Jeffrey Stanley

Name: Tesla's Letters
Brand: Jeffrey Stanley
SKU: 9780573622922
Rating: 3 (7 reviews)

Tesla's Letters Book Cover — Tesla's Letters Cover

Highlights

Small Cast

Female

Male

105 mins Present Day Strong Role for Leading Woman (Star Vehicle) Interior Set Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes American

Synopsis

The two-act, 4-character stage play set in 1997 in the Balkans is about an American who sets out to find Nikola Tesla's doomsday device only to discover that a machine is not required.

Electrical pioneer Tesla, a Croatian-born Serb, was Thomas Edison's biggest rival.

Daisy Archer, a bright-eyed Ph.D. candidate, arrives in Belgrade thinking she has permission to view a certain cache of letters at the Nikola Tesla Museum.

She is not prepared to face the museum's director Dragan, a Serb with family in Croatia, who has needs of his own and who strikes a dangerous bargain with Daisy.

He will test her willingness to see the letters by having her enter war-torn Croatia to visit Tesla's birthplace and determine whether it has been destroyed.

If she returns with photographic evidence she will be given access to Tesla's letters.

Daisy learns that the bargain is much more complicated than it at first appears, and that she is a pawn in a larger agenda.

The play received its world premiere in New York at The Ensemble Studio Theatre on April 6, 1999, directed by Curt Dempster and funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The cast included Keira Naughton as Daisy Archer and Victor Slezak as Dragan.

Press Reviews

"Is there a more timely play in New York? This well written, well constructed drama constitutes pertinent, intelligent, and often witty and suspenseful theatre. It’s a measure of its appeal as theatre that the first act ends not with a whimper but a bang... Tesla’s Letters provides a multitude of rewards."
— The New York Times

"Jeffrey Stanley has a nice ironic sense of humor, but it took NATO air strikes to turn it black. In its refusal to take sides or settle for easy analysis, the powerful Tesla’s Letters provides a welcome contrast to the high-intensity chatter of CNN et al."
— Time Out New York

"It perceptively tells the story of a Balkan society so laden with a sense of victimization that it can no longer see its own murderous face... [Daisy] obtains an intimate knowledge of human evil, a discovery that shatters even the myth of Tesla’s peace-loving past... The writing offers historical depth and insight on a subject that defies simplified soundbites and media clichés."
— Village Voice

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Biljana 60; Dragan's secretary.	—	—	60; Dragan's secretary.
Daisy Archer 27; US graduate student.	—	—	27; US graduate student.
Zoran Jelecic 24; Croatian entrepreneur.	—	—	24; Croatian entrepreneur.
Dragan Milincevic 42; Director of the Nikola Tesla Museum.	—	—	42; Director of the Nikola Tesla Museum.