Young Performers Workshop to present ‘Chaplin’ and ‘Seven Chances’

Hackettstown. Centenary Stage Company’s Young Performers Workshop will present its spring festival of shows from May 28 to 30 in the Sitnik Theatre of the Lackland Performing Arts Center at 715 Grand Avenue in Hackettstown.

The students in the program will present two productions. The first, Chaplin, includes several “Classic Celluloid Stories Told in Dance,” choreographed and adapted by program director Michael Blevins. The second, Seven Chances, is a comedy in three acts by Roi Cooper Megrue.

Chaplin will be presented on Friday, May 28 at 8 p.m., Saturday, May 29, at 2 p.m., and Sunday, May 30, at 7 p.m. Multiple works of the classic film star Charlie Chaplin are given new life in these pantomime-dances, which includes the silent masterpiece “The Kid,” about a little tramp who discovers a little orphan and brings him up but is left desolate when the orphanage reclaims him.

Seven Chances will be showing on Saturday, May 29, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 30, at 2 p.m. It tells the story of Jimmie Shannon, who is about to get $12 million dollars left by his deceased grandfather — provided he is married by the time he reaches his 30th birthday. “I’m not engaged,” he says, “and I’m not in love, and I don’t know a girl in the world well enough to even hook her up the back, and I’ve got to be married by midnight tomorrow.”

The Centenary Stage Company Young Performers Workshop (YPW) is a musical theater training program for children 8 to 18 years old and operates under the auspices of the Centenary Stage Company, a not-for-profit Equity Theatre Company in residence at Centenary University.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit centenarystageco.org or call 908-979-0900.