The Tesla coil offers one of science’s most theatrical demonstrations, sending blue forks of electricity cracking and spitting into the air. As its inventor, Nikola Tesla, packed up his kit and trekked across Europe and America for another demonstration before wild-eyed spectators at the close of the nineteenth century, he kept a balance between education for its own sake and telling stories through sparks and wonder.
Seventy years after his death, Tesla remains one of the greatest scientists who has ever lived. The scope of his invention reaches as far as radar and x-ray technology, hydro-electric power, and the transistor. Tesla’s life and philosophy should inspire anyone who has ever laboured to create something new.
Tesla’s autobiography, My Inventions, chronicles the development of a creative mind. It begins one day in school, with a boy watching his physics teacher make a lightbulb spin by coating the glass with tinfoil and connecting the bulb to a static machine. As he witnessed that “mysterious phenomena”, Tesla felt his life acquiring a charge that pulling him irreversibly in a new direction. Reading this, I remember the first time I sat in a theatre and realised that, without my consent, my ambitions had been redirected.
With practice, we acquire the theoretical understanding and dexterity to push ourselves further. As Tesla developed his mind through study, he began to fear “losing sight of the great underlying principle” behind his work, and becoming one of the sad “technical men, able in their special departments, but dominated by a pedantic spirit”. We would do well to remember this as we sit through yet another production that overwhelms with its sheer competence, diverting us without surprising us.
Tesla escaped the trap. He came to believe that “human pain” could not be solved just by providing for man’s “material existence, however abundantly”. The solution, he reasoned, must be to “concentrate on some big idea” through his work. In this, Tesla reminds me of the interests and idiosyncratic world-views that many successful directors cultivate, which result in productions that no-one else could make in quite the same way. This is what creates plays and productions that – although we might find them difficult – claw into our memories and remain there for years.
Last year, I wrote about a conversation I had with the theatre director Joe Hill-Gibbins about his production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie at the Young Vic. Debating how to explore the play’s theatricality through design, Joe was loath to present “the boring version of the play”, in which the theme was suggested merely by having the play’s narrator step in front of a curtain to deliver monologues. The production had to find something deeper, he argued, something more expressive of the play’s dark heart and of its characters. To do otherwise would be to direct by moving actors around a stage – this would allow the audience to hear Williams’ witty words, but would otherwise be “empty”. A story is merely a confection unless it taps into some deeper human experience to offer insight beyond the teller’s desire to be heard.
Tesla’s big idea was his “wireless transmitter”, an enormous tower by whose means “the human voice and likeness [might] be reproduced everywhere, and aerial machines propelled around the earth without a stop”. But like so many artists who struggle, Tesla believed he did his best work alone. He wanted to “release the energy of atoms” but struggled to connect with anyone who thought of an idea’s utility before its beauty. This led him to hand over inventions rather than exploit them commercially like Thomas Edison, the more famous inventor to whom he is often compared. When Marconi developed the telephone using many of Tesla’s inventions, Tesla commented only that as the relevant patents had expired, the opportunities should be “open to all”. I wonder if the depth of his relentless giving was partly responsible for the sadder aspects of his life.
Tesla is revered by many of us who take solidity in the word ‘geek’. A few months ago, the prolific cartoonist Matthew Inman (aka The Oatmeal) made Tesla the subject of an irreverent and moving cartoon tribute, followed by a crowdfunding campaign that raised $1.3-million to buy Tesla’s former laboratory on Long Island and erect a museum to the inventor’s memory. You could do much worse this morning than drop a few pennies into Inman’s virtual jar before you brew your morning coffee and start to think on your next mad scheme.
Many people in theatre make beautiful things but struggle to create an sustainable ecosystem around their work. Here, Tesla’s life and work should sound a cautionary note as much as inspire us. His career serves as a reminder to find a safe place between the general good and keeping ourselves in check, nourishing the body as well as the mind.
Reference: My Inventions, the story of Tesla’s creative life, written at the age of 63 and published in Electrical Experimenter magazine