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Youngstown native Roger Trent brings musical to hometown ‘THE CENTRALIA EXPERIENCE’
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
Roger “Teco” Trent will return to his hometown Saturday to stage his inspirational musical, “The Centralia Experience,” starring gospel singer Vickie Winans and Gary Jenkins of the R&B group Silk.
Trent, a playwright, songwriter, author and producer, grew up in Youngstown and is a 1990 graduate of Rayen High School. He set “The Centralia Experience” in that east-central Pennsylvania town, which has been largely abandoned because it sits atop a coal mine that has been on fire for decades.
Trent has written and produced four other musicals, but this is the first one that he has taken on the road. The six-city tour will begin in Youngstown’s Powers Auditorium.
The performance will mark an artistic homecoming for Trent, who is incorporating dancers from Youngstown’s Lindsay Renea Dance Theater and singers from New Beginnings Church into the show.
Trent got the idea for the musical while taking a class.
“The instructor started talking about Centralia, and it intrigued me,” said Trent, in a phone interview from his Nashville, Tenn., home. “I got in my car and went there, and afterward I started seeing stories about the people who refused to leave [despite the dangerous and unhealthy environment]. I thought, we all have our own toxic situation that we refuse to leave. It could be an abusive relationship or a bad job, and we stay out of familiarity or fear of taking on the unknown.
“I used Centralia as a metaphor for being stuck in a box, and for getting the courage to go after our dreams, especially when stuck in a toxic environment.”
Several characters in the play are in situations from which they really need to break free.
“I put them in that town of Centralia, and watch how they get out of it,” he said. “At first, everybody in town wears black and gray until they decide to get out, to be enlightened.”
The stage scenery depicts a run-down apartment building, dead trees and other signs of death and decline. Smoke is always pouring onto the stage, just as it seeps from cracks in the earth in Centralia.
Trent wrote most of the music for the show, with the exception of numbers by Winan and Jenkins. “Centralia” has a cast of 37, including several actors who play townsfolk and double as musicians. “[The music] has a coffee-house type feel,” said Trent.
Persons of any faith will relate to the story, said Trent, whose other gospel musicals include the hit “Where Did I Go Wrong,” which featured Bern Nadette Stanis (Thelma in TV’s “Good Times”), Lil G of Silk and Regina McCrary (“Diary of a Mad Black Woman”).
Trent credits Bennie Pritchett, his drama teacher at Rayen High School, for his setting him on a performing arts career path.
“We did plays at Rayen and learned about [playwright] August Wilson, and took a trip to Pittsburgh to a performing arts center,” he said. “That’s what got me into theater.”
Trent lived in Pittsburgh before moving to Nashville 10 years ago.
He first produced “Centralia” in the Music City in 2014.