Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of
Nikola Tesla
Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla is an explosive, extradimensional and alarmingly theatrical exploration of one of the most formidable inventing minds of the past one hundred years.
The story, set in turn of the century New York, chronicles the career of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current, whose work in the field of electricity ushered-in the modern age.
In Tesla’s Victorian world we see a reflection of our modern times: a world where new technology dazzles and fascinates with its promises while at the same time threatens, provoking social paranoia with its unknown implications for humanity.
Brilliant! explores the human impulse for creation, as well the loneliness and isolation of an inventive mind that dreams at a scale too large for its time.
The story is told with playfully eclectic staging: A song and tap-dance routine depicts a fierce battle between Tesla and Thomas Edison. A silent film is performed live on stage, which details Tesla’s descent into madness in his desert laboratory. And the biggest crowd pleaser is an inflated sphere five feet in diameter which is used in an array of acrobatic feats as it comes to symbolize Tesla’s extraordinary visions and dreams.
Brilliant! is the most produced show of the Electric Company to date, playing to sold-out crowds at festivals and on the main stage.
“The young artists of the Electric Company display a dizzying
theatrical vocabulary”
—Georgia Straight