Jeffrey Stanley has a nice ironic sense of humor, but it took NATO air
strikes to turn it black. Stanley is the author of Tesla's Letters, a
new
play opening Tuesday 6 as part of Ensemble Studio Theatre's First Light
series, with Grant James Varjas, Keira Naughton and Victor Slezak
(pictured).
Based on Stanley's experiences in Belgrade, where he traveled in 1997
to
research the life of Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla (inset), the play
follows
an American grad student who finds herself reluctantly drawn into the
ethnic
rivalries that rocked the Balkans in the early '90s. 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.
-- Aaron Gell
