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Fucci chose stage over athletics

Rich Copley Herald-Leader Culture Columnist

Trent Fucci was doing what was normal for guys in his family.

His grandfather, Dominic Anthony Fucci, was an All-American in football and baseball at the University of Kentucky in the late 1940s, and he briefly played for the Detroit Lions in the National Football League.

His father, Sam Fucci, was a baseball and track standout at Tates Creek High School and played baseball for Auburn University. His uncle, Dominic Anthony Fucci Jr., was the 1975 Kentucky Mr. Basketball. He played baseball for Auburn and was drafted by the Chicago White Sox, making it to the team's Triple A affiliate. Trent's cousin, Ryan Fucci, is a basketball standout at Tates Creek.

As Trent Fucci was getting started in sports, playing T-ball, his mom, Holly, noticed that whenever he wasn't on the field, he was over at the stands "entertaining the a udience," he recalls, catching himself referring to sports fans as "the audience."

Fucci says, "My mom said, 'We need to get you into a theater program.'"

He did some theater, in school at Tates Creek, but he also stayed with sports through his freshman year at Transylvania University, where he played baseball.

"Finally, it became apparent that I needed to focus on theater," Fucci says.

His stage career since then is another example of why, as much as we watch college athletics programs to look for future sports stars, it's worth watching the stages for future marquee actors.

Fucci is now in graduate school at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where he will spend his last year, the 2010-11 academic year, as an intern at Orlando Shakespeare Theater.

It was Orlando and the prestigious Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival that helped point Fucci toward his biggest role in his hometown.

He was looking for a monologue to perform in the festival, and a couple of UCF professors pointed him to Prince Hal from William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I. Fucci's performance of the monologue that ends Act I earned him the classical- acting award in the competition.

This week, Fucci will expand his performance of that role from a signature monologue to the entire show in SummerFest's production of Henry IV, Part I.

"The most challenging part is developing the character from the beginning through the middle and end," Fucci says. "With Prince Hal, I truly start the play as one person, go on a journey, and in the end I am someone else."

Fucci has been in the Shakespearean productions in the Arboretum for the past three summers, playing supporting roles. And he has played other major leads.

"I've yelled, 'Stella!' in the Little Theatre at Transy," he says, referring to his performance as Stanley Kowalski in a Transylvania University Theatre production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

But Prince Hal is a towering challenge, and it could be a role Fucci will take on again.

SummerFest has talked about the possibility of doing Henry IV, Part II and Henry V in future summers, depending on how well the current production is received.

Fucci says he isn't looking ahead at Hal in the future plays because he wants to play the character as written in Part I.

But he is electrified by the prospect that he might be able to carry the character through another play or two.

"It is an actor's dream to carry one character through three summers and three shows," Fucci says.

Of course, even if Summer Fest programs the subsequent Henry plays, Fucci's ability to live that dream would depend on his career trajectory and what other opportunities might compete with another SummerFest stand.

For this summer, Fucci is having fun giving Hal some of his athleticism and a manic energy, as Hal verbally and physically jousts with Falstaff, played by Herald-Leader contributing music writer Walter Tunis, much to the consternation of Hal's father, played by Eric Johnson.

In Fucci's own family, there is no dismay that his career veered from sports.

"You hear about people whose families aren't behind them," Fucci says. "My family has always been supportive, there for every show. I think my grandmother cries at every show, even if it's a comedy."