Buckminster Fuller, and More Buckminster Fuller at Chester
Last week we joined a packed house for Chester Theater’s 37th season opener, Buckminster Fuller: The History and Mystery of the Universe. Reading up on the man, he was a compelling, quirky contrarian from a long line of New England contrarians, and he was recognized as one of the century’s top thinkers. But this one-man play, starring Michael Preston, would have to wring out a lot from a man who, in this interpretation, never stopped talking and didn’t care whether we understood his dark science or not.
The setting is Fuller’s workshop, with covered-up furniture and models of geodesic domes; it appears that Fuller has just
returned to his laboratory, and he awkwardly dons his lab coat to settle in. Behind him are movable blackboards and white screens, which would come in useful later when projectors displayed some of his architectural work on them.
Preston does a great job, even being able to recite the complex theories of the great thinker, and he keeps at it for a very long two and a quarter hours. Preston manages to be funny at the same time as he is speaking in words that even most MIT grads would have a hard time parsing. Some of it is deep, like the comment that a child is born a genius and spends his whole life being de-geniused. Other times, I was glad I had the images to help me understand the theories. Synergy, he said more than a few times.
Preston also uses his physical chops to both entertain and enlighten us about the tetrahedrons and octahedrons he was creating with the plastic frame. He keeps on with the monologue no matter what he is doing, and we ride along, learning and trying to get it.
The question at intermission was, will it get faster? Is there more we need to be told about domes or the vectorial history of geometry …am I boring you? But I bought a coffee in the lobby and soldiered on, and in the end, I guess I decided I liked him enough to just listen.
Set builder Tim Latta did a good job representing the lair of a genius, with the split rail roof of Fuller’s Chicago workshop, the dome models, and a work stool.
One-man shows aren’t for everyone, but I can understand the appeal from a business standpoint for a small theater company. Some of the most interesting aspects of Fuller’s life include having been kicked out of Harvard twice, never getting his degree, and the car that he invented with three engines that went nowhere. Spaceship Earth is what he called our world, and the play led me to dig deeper into his biography, which is where the story is most interesting.
Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe, Chester Theater, June 19-28, 2026, by D.W. Jacobs, Directed by Barbara Karger, with Michael Preston. Tickets