Marco Bucio says he never could have imagined a decision he made five years ago would have such an effect on his life.
Going out for the play in eighth grade at Westchester Middle School, Bucio found a love for acting He has continued performing throughout his career at Hinsdale South High School.
This week, the senior will culminate his stage time in major productions at the Hinsdale South by playing the lead character, John Proctor, in “The Crucible.”
“I have no regrets about doing it,” Bucio said of acting. “It allowed me to find myself.”
Bucio said through performing he has become a much more confident person.
“It was definitely a turning point for me,” he said of that eighth-grade decision.
Bucio will lead a cast and crew of 40 in “The Crucible,” which will be performed at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday in the Hinsdale South auditorium.
The Arthur Miller play, written in 1953, is a dramatization and partially fictionalized tale of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693.
Hinsdale South theater director Chris Kostro said he picked the piece for the school’s spring production because it is very ingrained in the curriculum. Both English I and English III classes read “The Crucible.”
“It is used a lot here,” Kostro said. “It is a great body of work.”
The dark and heavy piece is intended to get audience members thinking about false accusations and going along with the crowd, Kostro said.
“It is an allegory for the red scare (when people were accused of having ties to the Communist Party by U.S. Sen. Edward McCarthy and others in the early 1950s),” Kostro said. “It was scary for people going through that.”
He said the message is one that resonates today as well.
“It’s a dramatic piece about what happens when fear, mob mentality, persecution and the desire to blame takes over in a community,” Kostro said. “Although the story takes place in Puritan Massachusetts, it is a timeless tale about blame and scapegoating that still happens to this day.”
The cast of 21 struggled with the dialogue, Kostro said, noting that the 17th century language in the play makes it difficult to ad lib. Because of that, actors are dependent on one another to stick to the script.
More Top Picks Best Rice Cookers
He said it is a piece that challenges the high school actors.
Like Bucio, seniors David Petrak and Lizzie O’Neill will mark “The Crucible” as their last major production at Hinsdale South. Petrak has been in 12 productions at South and has been acting since the second grade. O’Neill will be in her 13th high school performance and has been acting since the fourth grade.
“We’ve put so much time in inside this auditorium,” said O’Neill, who plays Elizabeth Proctor in the show. “I spend more time here than I do at home.”
Petrak, who plays Deputy Gov. Danforth, agreed, saying he can’t even imagine how many hours he has spent in the school’s auditorium.
South productions normally have matinee performances for area students. Because of the subject matter, more middle-schoolers will be coming to this week’s performance.
“It is nice to have older (kid) audiences,” Petrak said. “We will be having more middle-schoolers.”
O’Neill has made the cast of every show she auditioned for during her high school tenure, a feat not easily accomplished in the competitive Hinsdale South theater program.
Tickets for the show are $8 and can be reserved by emailing Kostro at [email protected] or calling the reservation line at 630-468-4356.
Kevin Beese is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.