The pungent streets of East St. Louis will replace the clean Canadian Rockies air for one night in Jasper.

The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, will be at the Jasper Activity Centre on March 20, as part of Arts Jasper’s latest offering.

Director Bonnie Gratz said mounting a production of such a famous play presents new challenges, so an intense and unorthodox rehearsal regimen was put into place that emphasized memory and experience instead of lines.

“We had all of the actors live together and do the scenes in real time,” Gratz said. “There are errands run in the play, and we had the actors act them out... this way the audience is a voyeur into the life of the family. The audiences said it really seemed as if they were really watching this happen.”

Some of the actors weren’t allowed to meet one another until their scenes on stage.

“It made for an interesting rehearsal process. Some of the actors became extraordinarily close. By the time they got to the studio, they had memories of their discussions as if they had really happened to them,” Gratz said.

This blurs the line between performance and experience, Gratz said, an idea pushed by playwright Henrick Ibsen, where the line between art and reality is blurred. It’s a reverse method of creating reality television.

Adding to the reality of the play is the fact the actors delved so deeply into their roles. On top of living together as a family, one travelled to St. Louis to get a feel of the city, another researched mental illness (a key theme in the play) and a dialect coach was brought in to teach St. Louis and southern accents to the actors.

“The dialect is a huge part of story telling in William’s plays,” Gratz said.

Gratz considers Williams to be the Shakespeare of the 20th century. The Glass Menagerie is a semi-autobiographical memory play set in East St. Louis. It tells the tale of the Wingfield family, headed by single mother Amanda Wingfield, a faded southern debutant who wishes for nothing more than a husband and home for her daughter, Laura, whose paralysing shyness and fear of change leave her in a fragile state. Tom Wingfield, 21, is the sole breadwinner for the family, but seeks escape from the crippling reality of the impovershed family.

“It’s the story of a family on the ropes,” Gratz said.

The performance has received rave reviews after its debut in Calgary in January.

“This is a pivotal work in drama and we felt a responsibility to do a fantastic job,” Gratz said.

Tickets are available at The Other Paw Bakery and Tekarra Colour Lab.