‘The Tesla Project’ Juices Up a Director

Nikola who?

“He’s one of those well-kept secrets,” said Mark Bringelson, speaking of Croatian-born electrical inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). Tesla is the subject of Donald Krieger’s new multimedia theater piece, “The Tesla Project,” which opens Wednesday at LACE.

“I’d never heard of him. But when Donald started explaining who he was--and about his neurotic tendencies, I immediately became interested.”

How neurotic? “Unbelievably. Exceedingly,” Bringelson said sunnily. “He had nearly phobic tendencies. For instance, before he’d sit down to a meal, he had to have exactly 18 napkins to personally clean the silverware and glassware. He insisted on staying in hotel rooms with numbers on the doors that could be divisible by three. And he had an abhorrence of pearl earrings on women. Anne Morgan, who was the daughter of J. P. Morgan, was in love with Tesla--but she wore pearl earrings. So you can imagine how far that got.”

Krieger, who spent several years researching Tesla and his work (including the harnessing of alternating current and inventing the Tesla coil) has written a six-actor memory piece with visuals (his own slide projections as well as short films by him, Rocky Schenck and Jim Comstock) and original music (by Kristian Hoffman). “It follows the events in Tesla’s life in pretty linear terms,” Bringelson noted. “But it also moves around in time. People from other time periods in his life will come into a certain time sequence and relate to it. So you always have the sense of looking back, even though you’re moving forward.”

Assembling the large-scale piece, he added, has been an exercise in hard work--and diplomacy.

“I really enjoy working with brand-new material, because of the relationship between director and writer,” he emphasized. “But sometimes it gets hairy. I’ve had a writer give me notes after a run-through that say things like ‘I will kill you, and I will kill that actor, unless he does it this way.’ No, not Donald. It’s still delicate, as it should be--because you have passionate people who care about their work and the material, and have an individual perspective. But the reason Donald wanted a director was to have someone who also had a strong viewpoint, who’d add another dimension onto his piece.”

Bringelson’s empathy for the writer stems partly from his own original career ambitions: to be an actor/writer. Born at a naval hospital near San Diego, he spent his early years in South Dakota and Minnesota, then moved to Woodland Hills during elementary school. “My family is very much of that Midwestern hard-work ethic, real Middle America.” Which meant they loved the idea of his going into theater? “Not really,” he said ruefully. “But over time, they’ve gotten used to it.”

After college (Cal State Stanislaus and UC Irvine), he moved to Los Angeles and began working as an actor. It’s still his major form of support; he recently appeared in “Pump Boys and Dinettes” at San Diego’s Old Globe and La Mirada Civic. On Equity-Waiver stages his acting credits number the Tolstoy-inspired “Strider” (Cast, 1983), Mimi Seton’s “Wazo Wazo” (L.A. Theatre Works, 1984) and a writing/performing collaboration with Seton, Jane Schulman and Tony Abatemarco in “Brain Hotel” (Cast, 1981 and ‘84).

A few years ago, Martin Casella asked him if he’d consider directing his new play, “Beautiful Dreamer.” Bringelson staged the original one-act workshop production at the Cast, and later the two-act version at the Landmark Theatre. “And that’s how I became a director,” he said simply. “Eventually people started bringing things to me on a regular basis. I’ve found that directing can fulfill the part of me that likes to write, that likes to create something from scratch. The acting part of me does that all the time: creating characters, playing different people. But the directing part of me can deal with things on a much more intellectual level.

“I love words--and I love (exploring) human behavior,” he added. “What excites me about any writer is his point of view. And Donald has a complex, intense point of view: about how Tesla relates to the modern world, what he means emotionally to us today.” Bringelson himself isn’t quite sure. “Is he a hero, or just a neurotic kind of carnival showman who used to act as a human electrical conductor and throw sparks off his body during exhibitions? You know, there’s a whole group that still worships Tesla. Some of them even claim he was from another planet.”