Tribute to Al from Spaceship Earth

As part of its 40th anniversary season, the San Diego Rep is remounting Douglas Jacobs’s R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe. The show, which opens Wednesday, March 16, premiered in 2000 and has since traveled the globe.

The REP and Jacobs are dedicating this production to Al Irvine, a true friend of the arts who passed away last fall.

Jacobs tells why: “In the world of San Diego arts and culture, this was not an unusual exchange: ‘Do you know Al Irvine?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know the guy with a long white ponytail, blue streaks along the side of his head?’ ‘Oh yeah. Great guy! Goes to everything.'

"Al had a comprehensive curiosity. The hardest thing for any friend: he did so much, it’s impossible to remember it all, or even a good chunk of it. In response to this conundrum, Blake Berry wrote: ‘Tell me about it. I knew him for 73 years.’ They’d been the closest of friends since grammar school. And the friendship continues.

"Al’s email user name captured his ubiquitous presence: 'airvine.' To his friends, he was the airvine that connected everything to everyone. If you want to know his many sides, you’ll have to ask almost everyone at the Rep, Moxie Theatre, Eveoke Dance Theater, and almost any performing-arts group in the city. Many swore he was one of their closest friends, their best listener, biggest fan, responding always with a huge laugh, a knowing chuckle that could wiggle his whole body, a swift riff on any topic: maybe the clue to a golf swing, or a critical thought with a knife-sharp edge, and even a blunt rebuke if a friend grew too self-indulgent.

"He was the best of friends, not because he loved everything you did, but because he was willing to share everything he knew about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you about that guy with the blue streaks in his hair.

"Here’s a typical bit of Al, from one of hundreds of emails he tossed me: ‘We go through alternating phases of knowing almost everything followed by knowing almost nothing. When I entered college in 1955 we knew almost everything and as a result everything was pretty boring. Since then we’ve learned something on the order of 16 times what we knew then and so we learned more about how little we know and now we are in a know-nothing phase. I like the know-nothing phases much better.’

"He served as an invaluable dramaturg on R. Buckminster Fuller. He called himself an ‘Amaturg,’ as in amateur, because he was new to the job. He also chose that title because it connects to amour, one who does the work for the love of it.”

Al Irvine wrote program notes for the original Rep production:

“R. Buckminster (‘Bucky’) Fuller could have been the reincarnation of Leonardo Da Vinci! He certainly had one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. His real impact will come in this new century as we begin to exploit his ideas and work.

“He was the most important individual I have ever met.

“In 1927, age 32, Bucky decided that he had to reinvent his life, to think for himself, to unlearn everything. For example, he rejected Pi, because he didn’t think that nature would use a number it couldn’t calculate exactly. So he invented a system of mathematics he thought Nature was using to create flowers, seashells, viruses, and people.

“He was probably the first person to realize and clearly establish that, because of our current level of technology, ‘there is enough to go around.’ We can now feed and house everyone in the world comfortably.

“Bucky said ‘selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete! — which I think is, perhaps the most powerful statement of fact ever uttered.

“Physically Bucky was unimpressive, a small, ordinary-looking man. He thought of himself as, and insisted that he was, just a typical person, an everyman. But the force of his intellect, his personal integrity, his unbounded energy and a personal charisma captivated me and almost everyone who ever had the opportunity to meet him or hear him speak.

“Bucky may have been the best system engineer who ever lived. He literally saw the world as an interconnected, interacting collection of systems and subsystems. He saw how everything and everyone was connected and mutually dependent, most especially all of us, the passengers on what he called ‘Spaceship Earth.’"