Buckminster Fuller @Arena Stage

Last night we made the trek down to Crystal City to attend the Buckminster Fuller Salon hosted by Arena Stage. Crystal City is a complex of buildings all connected by underground passages. It has a lot of restaurants and is home to a somewhat erratic supply of shops. It looks a little like a forgotten suburban 80's mall. Each hallway seems to have a theme. One hall was decorated to look like a "Knights of the Roundtable" village, another looked like clinic hallway and then the other side was more "normal" mall-like decor with the big plastic looking plants in the tiled planters.

From looking at the Yelp and Google Map reviews of the stores and restaurants in the center the big draw seems to be that you don't have to go outside in bad weather as the metro station lets you out in the mall center.

Part of the staff at Arena Stage has called this center home for the past few years as their new Mead Center is under construction. The Lincoln Theatre is where they host the musicals, and this smaller more utilitarian theatre next to the Marriot, is for the plays.

Arena Stage has assembled three experts to be the speakers along with a facilitator who had been on the directorial staff for the production of the show. Each speaker talked about their individual area of expertise and then they began to take questions from the audience. The audience was comprised of season subscribers and many of them were extremely interesting. I thought the discussion was thought provoking. It stayed near the topic at all times and both sides of many arguments were addressed. You can read more about the show- here. or read Bucky's Wiki page here.

Upon leaving the theatre we realized that a Star Trek movie night was happening just around the corner from our current location. We walked over to a small square covered in blankets, chairs and people all facing a portable movie screen. I think my husband would have liked to stay for the movie but we decided to go home as we were not wearing our sit-on-the-ground-for-2 hours clothing and it looked like the movie would not be starting for another 45 minutes or so. They are showing the Star Trek movies in order each Monday night at 7 for the rest of the summer so we may attempt to go later in the year.