‘Glass' half full: SFCC theater students are excited to stage classic Depression-era play

State Fair Community College theater students have set out to rescue “The Glass Menagerie” from the preconceived notion that it’s a depressing Depression-era play that kids are forced to read in high school.

Toward that end, they are putting on a quality, faithful staging of the Tennessee Williams classic that premiered in 1944. Directed by Tim Wells, the SFCC production will run Wednesday through Sunday in the Stauffacher Theatre.

Making the four actors’ jobs easier is the fact that they all are fans of the show.

“This was probably one of my favorite plays ever, actually,” said Lauren Smith, of Owensville, who plays Laura Wingfield. “It’s really cool that I get to do it. We read it my junior year in honors English.”

“I had never read it before I got here,” said Kacey Knox, of Lexington, who plays Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller who enters in the second act. “I know it’s required reading in a lot of high schools. It’s a wonderful piece of literature. I think it’ll have a good turnout just because of how powerful a piece of literature it is. And the stage interpretation of it gives it a whole new element from when you’re just reading it.”

Williams makes no bones about the fact that the play is set in the hazy, orange- and brown-hued past, even though it’s set only a decade before he wrote it. In the opening scene, Tom Wingfield (Caleb Shook, of Urbana, in the SFCC production) tells the audience: “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory, everything seems to happen to music.”

Despite Williams’ questionable opening gambit of removing the immediacy of the material, the SFCC actors believe the characters’ timeless relatability is why theater-goers will enjoy “The Glass Menagerie.”

“It is during a depressing period, but you don’t necessarily see it all the time because they have to make the best of what they have,” Knox said. “So for the most part, you see an upbeat style of how they live. They’re trying to keep everything going and they have a good work ethic because they have to.”

“It can be depressing, depending on your interpretation,” Shook said. “I think people will be able to relate to the whole family aspect of it because it’s a story of a boy, his mother and his sister and the conflicts they go through day-to-day.”

Shook, who played Honus Wagner in last fall’s “Honus & Me,” has never related to a character more than he does to Tom — he latched onto the character’s longing for something better. Yet that doesn’t make his acting job easier.

“For me as an actor, I like to have a character that can protect me, so if the audience doesn’t like me, it’s not me they don’t like, it’s the character,” Shook said with a smile. “But having a character so similar to you, it’s risky.”

Shook is reteaming with his castmate from “Honus & Me,” Jessica Scott, of Versailles. Scott played the ancient Miss Young in that show, and she took turns with Shook stealing scenes. In “The Glass Menagerie,” Scott again plays older than her age, but she still finds plenty to sympathize with in Amanda Wingfield, Tom’s overbearing mother.

“I think I do better with the more mature characters,” Scott said. “(Amanda) is kind of lost in herself sometimes. She grew up in the rich South and now living in the Depression in St. Louis is a big adjustment for her. She has good intentions and wants to look out for her kids, and it just comes off as kind of naggy sometimes.”

Like her castmates, Scott believes audiences will connect with the Wingfield family.

“I think they’ll enjoy it just because it could happen; it’s something relatable,” she said. “Even though it is set in olden times, it’s still stuff that can happen today.”