A friend sends this link to a blog video about the play, "R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe," which has been produced in several venues around the country recently. I did not see it, but would have loved to.
From the blog video, and the audience's highly positive reaction, it seems the play must have been truly wonderful, spontaneous, and creative. Of course, R. Buckminster Fuller is famous to many as the inventor of the geodesic dome. Scientists even named a carbon molecule “fullerenes” for its similarity to a geodesic sphere.
The actor depicting Bucky had a very good resemblance to the real man, as far as I can discern from looking at images of him online. I love the part of the video showing “Bucky” talking about himself as a child. He found that making triangles held their shape as nothing else did – this while other children were making houses and barns (ho-hum), rectangular structures that seemed to stand up, but were mostly pasted together. The triangles, though, felt nice and steady, he says. At the time, he didn't know he was making what in physics is called an octahedron tetrahedron truss, an isotropic vector matrix.
I also liked that he says the most important thing in life is – initiative. How true! I laughed when he said thinking might let you discover principles others overlook because they are too busy trying to please their boss.
The video was interesting too because I had never heard the term “spaceship Earth” before. “We now have the means to take care of everyone on the planet. Therefore, selfishness is unnecessary; war is obsolete,” says Bucky. Spaceship Earth is in danger, find out what needs to be done. That is the design responsibility. This strikes me as powerful and true. Then what the grandson said was cool – that the play gave the audience a feeling for the whole man and his sense of humor.