chicagoreader.com
November 15, 2007
TESLA'S
LETTERS
Jeffrey Stanley's play is yet another entrant in the "naive American
confronts atrocities abroad" genre. U.S. grad student Daisy Archer has
a name out of Henry James and a passion for electrical scientist Nikola
Tesla. She arrives in 1997 Belgrade bent on reading his letters, but
the museum director has other plans, sending her into war-torn Croatia
under a pretext that strains credibility--and the audience's patience.
Nick Bowling's schematic staging adds little visual interest to this
wearying exercise, and Daisy's smug conclusion--Americans don't kill
one another in vast numbers the way other nationalities do--holds up
only if one magically erases the Civil War. Tesla wouldn't approve of a
contraption that creates so much heat but sheds so little light.
--Kerry
Reid
LEAVE
YOUR ASSUMPTIONS AT THE DOOR
Kerry Reid’s review of Tesla’s Letters is
yet another entrant in the “I wasn’t really paying attention to the
play and I’m only doing this to make a quick 50 bucks and add it to my
résumé” genre of theater criticism. If the reviewer
can’t separate the
play’s ultimate statement with the momentary conclusion of the
character Daisy, he needs to take a class in basic playwriting
fundamentals. Daisy is indeed smug, like most Americans with short
historical memories; that’s the playwright’s very point. Dragan calls
her on it up one side and down the other throughout the play, including
specifically her defensive claim that atrocities have never happened in
the U.S. He alludes not only to your Civil War but reaches even
further
back to your genocide against the Native Americans and the Europeans’
ongoing, centuries-long “occupation” of North America. Apparently the
reviewer’s own recollection of U.S. history stops at 1861. Perhaps he
is more like Daisy than he realizes: ignorant of his own history,
defensive about Tesla, and possessed of a smug, self-righteous refusal
to observe and listen. The only difference is, Daisy is willing to try
to change.
--Alice Cooper
Kerry
Reid replies:
I'm
not a man.
COMMENTS:
Alice Cooper at 7:48 AM on
11/22/2007