While local artists continue to busily paint a mural depicting the 1854 arrival of Orphan Train on Pennsylvania Avenue, less than a block away, a group of dedicated students will bring some of the stories behind the historic program to life in a different fashion this weekend.

The Beckwith Theatre Company will debut its student production of Aurand Harris’ “The Orphan Train” at 7 p.m. Friday at the playhouse, 100 New York Ave., Dowagiac. The theater will host an encore presentation at 2 p.m. Saturday.

Attendance at both shows will be offered free of charge. No reservations are required.

“The Orphan Train,” penned by playwright Harris in 1998, tells the story of nine orphans who departed on the titular train — a program intended to relocate parentless children living on the  streets to new families across the country — from New York City in May 1914.

“Each character walks up to center stage and talks about their background and what happened to their lives after they are taken in by their new families,” said Jack Gannon, one of the directors of the Beckwith production. “Some of their tales are happy ones — and some are not.”

The cast is comprised of 22 middle and high school students from Dowagiac, Niles and South Bend, Gannon said. The cast has rehearsed for the performances every afternoon for the last several weeks.

The shows will cap off Beckwith’s 2017 Summer Youth Theatre Program, an initiative launched last year by Gannon, his wife, Peggy, and Ryan Murray, three veteran actors with Beckwith and members of the theater’s board of directors. The trio created the program in order to fill a gap in the fine arts they believe exists in the lives of local students, Gannon said.

“The high school [Dowagiac Union High School] does one musical every year, which is wonderful, but the schools don’t have a drama program or club,” Gannon said. “They [students] don’t get a real opportunity to experience these types of shows.”

Last summer, 18 students participated in a production of “Check Please,” a one-act comedy depicting a series of blind dates between various characters.

“As a director, there is a lot that is different about leading this kind of show,” Gannon said. “Most of the students have not yet developed their acting instincts, which requires us to take a more hands-on approach to directing. However, we also get to see the students grow and improve with every rehearsal. It gives you a great feeling you don’t normally get with adult actors. It is the coolest thing.”

For this year’s program, organizers decided to produce “The Orphan Train,” a script that has been on the radar of the Beckwith board for the past three years. The presentation will coincide perfectly with the painting of the downtown mural and various other events lined up for this year celebrating the arrival of the famous train in Dowagiac, which was the first city it stopped at after the program’s founding in 1854.

While the program is only is in its second year, Gannon said the community theater’s outreach to local students is already having a tremendous impact.

Many of the students who participated in last year’s youth production have returned this year. One of the returning students told her classmates during a presentation Gannon made about the program at the middle school earlier this year that she met one of her classmates through the production, and now the two are best friends, the director said.

Several other participants from last year did not return for this year’s shows — they instead are preparing for the Beckwith’s upcoming production of “Pippin” after auditioning and receiving the parts earlier this year, Gannon said.

“The program has awakened a passion for acting inside many of these students that they will carry with them the rest of their lives,” he said.

The director is encouraging parents, family and the rest of the community to check out one or both shows at the theater this weekend.

“It will be a really good production,“ Gannon said. “It will be great to see the kids do something great, and you will get to learn about the past in the process.”

This year’s program was funded in part by The Pokagon Fund, and was assisted by the Dowagiac Fine Art Boosters. “The Orphan Train” will be presented by special arrangement with Dramatic Publishing.