[ExI] "Buckminster Fuller: The History and Mystery of Life"

[John Grigg]

Last night I watched the superb one man play, "Buckminster Fuller: The
History and Mystery of Life."  Joe Spano nailed the role of the
visionary maverick who some have called, "the Leonardo DaVinci of the
20th century."  I was enthralled by the combination of excellent
acting, writing, lighting, multimedia display, and set design.  The
play was in a sense the most entertaining and educational university
lecture I have ever attended! lol  I have seen a number of
documentaries about Bucky's life and this work was an incredible
resurrection of both the man and his ideas.  The intelligence,
enthusiasm, concern, playfulness, energy, and earnestness of the man
was all there.

The humanity and charm of Buckminster Fuller came through as he waxed
poetic about the glories of love and how as a young lad he dropped out
of Harvard and ran off to the big city to court a beautiful showgirl!
They projected a photo of a young Bucky with a mischievous smile on
his face and the gorgeous dancer who caught his fancy. hee  But this
did not exactly go over well with his very concerned parents...
Later, Buckminster found himself back home, with his father lecturing
him about his future and the importance of wisely spending his college
money on a Harvard education.  And going on road trips to chase women
was not a viable alternative! lol  Harvard just did not agree with
him, but in time he met the right woman and they married and had a
long and happy marriage.  It was obvious that he adored her and his
romance with the universe and the future of humanity also applied to
the woman he loved and spent his life with.

The intertwining of Fuller's sometimes very painful and yet joyful
personal life, with his scientific and philosophical ideas was
fascinating.  The way his spiritual/transcendental experiences
affected his futurism and general outlook is very inspiring to me and
a needed example.

Taken from the "Good Times" online interview with Joe Spano:
For Spano, the most interesting aspect of Fuller's life is his
epiphany at the age of 32 when he stood on the shores of Lake Michigan
contemplating suicide.  He had gone bankrupt, lost his first child,
was discredited and unemployed staring into the frozen waters that
could take his life.  In that moment, he had an idea that would change
his life, and the world, forever.  It was then that he embarked on his
56-year experiment that attempted to prove his most controversial
ideas as feasible.  In that time he authored 28 books, earned 28
United States Patents, received 47 honorary doctorates and circled the
globe 57 times giving lectures and interviews. Spano says, "To come
back from that low-point and make your life function and find the
joyful responsibility to communicate is the most important thing that
I take out of this."
>>>

My very favorite quote from Buckminster Fuller is, "find the time to
think in a cosmically adequate manner."  I consider this to be one of
the coolest Transhumanist-themed ideas I have ever heard.  In so many
ways he tried to get across the notion that each of us really do
matter and can make a difference in terms of the fate of humanity.  I
found this both very powerful and humbling.

Another excerpt from the "Good Times" online article:
Spano has truly tapped into this role and encourages anyone who seeks
a connection to the world to see it.  He lays it out simply: "As much
as you want entertainment, people hunger for something real," he says.
"That's how I experience life.  Give me something that's so powerful
and I'll forget my life, but this is the opposite.  It gives great joy
and lets the audience say, 'oh yeah.'"
>>>

I heartily recommend everyone look to see if this play is coming to
their community, and if it is, then go see it!  I only wish my
comments here did justice to what I saw last night.

Only one performance was scheduled for my area and the auditorium was
about 90% full.  But I was saddened that I only saw a small handful of
young people there.  I would say the most numerous demographic was of
couples in their fifties and above.  But then it was a Friday night...
lol

I wish I could start up a nightclub called "Bucky's."  The place would
be full of dancing and fun, and held under a gigantic and brightly lit
geodesic dome!  Interesting and inspirational quotes & pictures from
Buckminster Fuller's life and ideas would be put on the walls of the
joint.  : )

John Grigg


Some Buckminster Fuller quotes that really resonate with me:
"If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It
is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference."

"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."

"Humanity is now experiencing history's most difficult evolutionary
transformation."

"I have been a deliberate half-century-fused inciter of a cool-headed,
natural, gestation-rate-paced revolution, armed with physically
demonstrable livingry levers with which altogether to elevate all
humanity to realization of an inherently sustainable,
satisfactory-to-all, ever higher standard of living. Critical
threshold-crossing of the inevitable revolution is already underway."

------------------------------

The following are two online reviews that covered this incredible production:

http://sixties-l.blogspot.com/2008/03/r-buckminster-fuller-history-and.html

R. Buckminster Fuller: The History and Mystery of Life

Actor Joe Spano takes on the life and ideas of the visionary
freethinker R. Buckminster Fuller

WALLACE BAINE - Sentinel staff writer
Article Launched: 03/07/2008

R. Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller has been dead for 25 years. But no one
of his generation, or perhaps of any previous generation, would be
more comfortable walking out of the past right into 2008.

Fuller "" futurist, inventor, philosopher, architect, engineer,
freethinker, utopian "" prefigured today's world of carbon
footprints, global warming and technological salvation. He has been
called one of the most fascinating original minds of the 20th century
and an enlightened American mystic. Yet, today, he has not penetrated
the mainstream consciousness of most Americans.

A new one-man show, coming to Santa Cruz on Friday, March 14, is
looking to enlighten contemporary audiences on the man who became a
central figure in the intellectual development of the 1960s
counterculture. "R. Buckminster Fuller: The History and Mystery of
Life" features actor Joe Spano in the conservative suit and big,
horn-rimmed glasses of Fuller. The play is meant to address both
Fuller's life and his ideas.

"There are biographical elements to it," said Spano, known for his
recurring role in the landmark 1980s TV series "Hill Street Blues."
"But it's also a history of the evolution of his thought."

Spano said he has commonly heard from audiences that many people were
pleasantly surprised at the play's content.

"I've heard, 'I was so afraid that I wasn't going to understand it.'
But it's not about science or specifics about engineering. It's
really about the experience of thinking for yourself, the integrity
that makes you be yourself and how you've got to follow the path to
fulfill your own life."

The play's writer and director Doug Jacobs said that he first came
across the ideas of Buckminster Fuller 40 years ago, during Fuller's
first full flowering of influence.

"I was a freshman at UC Santa Barbara, looking to study political
geography," said Jacobs. "And my brother, who was in the College of
Creative Studies at the time, told me, 'Hey, you gotta come hear this
guy talk.' So I went, at the beginning of Bucky's lecture, slipped
out to go to class, came back and he was still talking, left again,
came back again and he's still there. And this went on for two or three days."

It wasn't until years later, in 1980, when Jacobs read Fuller's
seminal book "Critical Path" that he went "down the rabbit hole" for
Fuller's ideas.

"Bucky bridges science and the humanities," said Jacobs. "All those
lines we draw "" left/right, Democrat/Republican, scientist/artist ""
he cut across all those lines. He just paid no attention to them. He
was all about jumping fences in the best kind of American way."

Fuller is most known as the inventor of the geodesic dome, but his
philosophical ideas embrace the doing-more-with-less notions only now
coming into mainstream thought today. He was a systems thinker who,
to take one example, felt that world hunger could be easily wiped out
with a different systematic approach.

The play came about in 1995 when Jacobs, already fully immersed in
the Bucky belief system, was approached to write a play on the
centennial of Fuller's birth. Jacobs said he brought elements of
performance art and entertainment into the story of Fuller's life,
perfectly in keeping with the man's personality.

"He had this fascination with show business," said Jacobs, "and a
not-so-secret desire to be a song-and-dance man. This will be
different than a lecture. There's a poetic element to the play as well."

Spano spent hours watching tape of Fuller's lectures to get the
mannerisms and speech patterns down, and also re-interprets Fuller's
tweedy manner of dress and personal style.

"He was really a counterculture figure," said Spano. "But he wanted
to be taken seriously also. And he knew he wouldn't be taken
seriously unless he dressed conservatively, like a bank clerk."

"The thing about him," said Jacobs, "was that he could go down into
the minute details of any subject that interested him and then zoom
out to the bigger picture, going masterfully from the microcosm to
the macrocosm and back again. And very, very few people have been
able to do that."

Jacobs said Fuller had wished to provide the world with an example of
what one person could do, given effort, energy and creativity, and
that his play reflects that part of Fuller's philosophy. "It's a call
to action to become who you're meant to become, just like he did. It
asks the question: What are you meant to do with your life?"

Spano said that Fuller's message is perfectly contemporary to today's
artists, writers and freethinkers.

"He says in the play, 'I do think we'll make it, if we wake up and
act in a sensible way.' And that's something that people really want to hear."
-------------------------

http://www.gtweekly.com/a-e/pass-the-buckminster-1

The Good Times website, article written by Alex Page:

Meet the P.R. man to the universe

R Buckminster Fuller was one of the greatest minds in history.
Descriptions of Fuller only obfuscate his life more than it was, with
apt but bizarre phrases like "the first navigator to chart spaceship
earth's critical path towards either utopia or oblivion."  Known to
most as the designer of the geodesic dome, Fuller was nothing short of
genius, but terribly disturbed as well.  He is credited with inventing
the Dymaxion Map and coining the word "debunked."

This man of mystery has a plethora of quirks, credits, inventions and
ideas.  Most of us have no idea who Fuller was or even his
philosophies that emanated with his environmental consciousness, but
wonder no more.  Joe Spano (Hill Street Blues, Apollo 13 and
Hollywoodland) is tackling the task of portraying the "Da Vinci of the
20th century" and he's coming right here to Santa Cruz through the UC
Santa Cruz Arts & Lectures series.  For one night only at 8 p.m. on
March 14 at UCSC's Mainstage Theater, Spano will be performing the
highly acclaimed one man show, "R. Buckminster Fuller: The History
(and Mystery) of Life."

Spano has been a film actor for nearly 35 years, and began his acting
career up in the Bay Area.  A San Francisco native, he attended UC
Berkeley where he quickly dropped his medical ambitions and found his
love for stage performance.  He helped found the Berkeley Repertory
Theater and performed with them for 10 years before he made his way to
television.  He's best known for his Emmy Award-winning role on Hill
Street Blues.  Spano describes this stage role as the hardest thing
he's done in his career. "The experience of being the sole
communicator is very satisfying," he says. "But it takes more time, is
much harder on you and you make less money.  But for family life it's
easier to do television.  I've found the process to be very
challenging this time; as you get older it gets harder because it's so
physical."  He's not the first to tackle this role, but his close-knit
relationship with director D.W. Jacobs has made this production reach
new heights of accuracy.

He explains that researching the role led him toward stacks of tapes,
books and papers written by and about the unique mind.  He also took
the script and really sank his teeth into it.  But nothing helped more
than getting to meet with Fuller's daughter who is now in her
eighties.  She provided an exclusive peek into Bucky's life that
biographies fall short of describing.

The whole performance has led the actor in his own understanding of
life.  He feels that Bucky Fuller and his words really speak to
people.  Too often audiences are watching in order to escape from
reality.  Yet this play guides the audience on an understanding of the
world, the universe and ourselves.  Spano believes that he has gained
a sense of what is true.  "I can't explain it and it'd be a bad idea
if I tried, but truth is like pornography," he says. "You know it when
you see it."  That seems to be a mantra of contemporary popular
culture.  With shows like American Idol and Survivor, we yearn for an
escape from reality into "reality."  It's clear through talking with
Spano that those types of shows are just a distraction.  Those that
seek reality must seek truth, but fabricated television cannot provide
that.  Instead we should try philosophical theater.  "R. Buckminster
Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of Life" interestingly borders that
realm of escape from, and explanation of, life.

For Spano, the most interesting aspect of Fuller's life is his
epiphany at the age of 32 when he stood on the shores of Lake Michigan
contemplating suicide.  He had gone bankrupt, lost his first child,
was discredited and unemployed staring into the frozen waters that
could take his life.  In that moment, he had an idea that would change
his life, and the world, forever.  It was then that he embarked on his
56-year experiment that attempted to prove his most controversial
ideas as feasible.  In that time he authored 28 books, earned 28
United States Patents, received 47 honorary doctorates and circled the
globe 57 times giving lectures and interviews. Spano says, "To come
back from that low-point and make your life function and find the
joyful responsibility to communicate is the most important thing that
I take out of this."

The performance is a two-hour play with multimedia components infused
to better convey the madness and genius of Buckminster Fuller's ideas,
concepts and inventions.  The show was written and directed by D.W.
Jacobs and pulls most of the script straight from the words and work
of Fuller who is purported to be the most documented person in human
history.  The play is being produced in conjunction with Z-Space
Studio and has been hosted at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, Spano's
self-declared "home theater," before its current tour throughout the
country.

Spano has truly tapped into this role and encourages anyone who seeks
a connection to the world to see it.  He lays it out simply: "As much
as you want entertainment, people hunger for something real," he says.
"That's how I experience life.  Give me something that's so powerful
and I'll forget my life, but this is the opposite.  It gives great joy
and lets the audience say, 'oh yeah.'"

-------------------------