Staging an iconic drama often means balancing the classic elements of the piece with the need to bring something fresh to the proceedings.

So it is with Groton Regional Theatre’s production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which is running through April 21.

There is at least one thing this version doesn’t mess with: the play’s most famous scene. The 1951 movie created an indelible dramatic moment when Marlon Brando’s impassioned and repentant Stanley Kowalski stands on the street below his apartment building and bellows “Stella!” to his wife.

In GRT’s production, director Vic Panciera has kept the sequence close to that presentation.

“We have to do it exactly the way Marlon Brando did because everybody’s expecting it. If we do it differently, I think it’s going to upset the rest of the show, because that’s what everybody remembers,” he says.

As for the plot: Stella’s sister, Blanche, seeks refuge in Stanley and Stella’s home after things go awry and she loses the family estate to creditors. Southern belle Blanche clashes with coarse Stanley, with tragic consequences.

Dan Bender plays Stanley in the GRT production, and Amy Polek portrays Blanche. Jaime Kelley is Stella, with Joe Grant as Blanche’s suitor, Mitch.

Panciera says Williams “writes such beautiful characters that are flawed. They’re not just a nice person; even the nice people are a little flawed. He writes well-rounded characters that are really fun to work with.”

In taking on the role of Stanley, Bender hadn’t seen the Brando movie in years and made a decision to refrain from watching it until the GRT run is done.

“I don’t want to be based off Brando. I want to make the role my own. … I just read the script and I just trusted the words,” he says.

He took a similar approach when he played McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at The Windham Theatre Guild. After that show ended, Bender finally watched Jack Nicholson’s performance in the 1975 movie version of “Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“It was really interesting — we had the same nuances,” he says.

Playing Stanley, he says, is “just something I’ve always wanted to do in my actor’s repertoire, I guess you could say … It’s a very different character than I ever played.”

He noted that he studied “Streetcar” a lot in college. As an acting major at the University of Connecticut, he had a teacher who really delved into the play and broke down the character of Stanley.

Bender, who grew up in Lebanon, spent a decade in Los Angeles after college, pursuing acting and doing some stage and film work.

He says that with every stage character, he likes taking chances and trying different things every night. He adds that that is the beauty of doing theater: you never know what’s going to happen.

Bender hopes the audience will realize that Stanley “is human. You can be as animalistic, as much of a brute as you might think, but everybody is human and everybody is going to mess up. He’s a very simple guy — but not a simple guy at the same time.”

Bender says he plays that famous “Stella!” scene “just very raw. This is the scene (where) he thought he lost Stella. He’s just realizing this, and he made a fool out of himself. It’s the point of realization, I guess, in the character, where he’s just, like, I just love this girl. I can’t screw up again. This is the love of my life.”

Bender might have wanted to avoid watching Brando’s take on Stanley, but Polek, who plays Blanche, took a different approach, viewing Vivien Leigh’s performance in the movie alongside Brando, as well as other versions of “Streetcar,” and diving into research.

“There are different parts of (Blanche’s) dramatic past that everybody can relate to, maybe not to the extreme (of her experience), but you will connect somewhere along the lines … There’s just a lot of connection,” she says. For instance, she notes, everyone has dealt with somebody who has been troubled by alcoholism.

Polek says that Blanche “just gets so wrapped up in the things in her head that she can’t differentiate reality from fantasy by the end, from all of the things she has gone through …”

Playing Blanche was, she says, “just such a huge undertaking that I couldn’t pass it up. I love a challenge.”

Polek grew up in Montville and did drama club as a youth. As an adult, she has worked with a variety of area theater groups, including the Norwich Arts Council and Chelsea Players. Right before “Streetcar,” she played multiple roles in A.R. Gurney’s play “The Dining Room” at The Windham Theatre Guild. She has done other shows with GRT before, including “Proof” and “The Rocky Horror Show.”

When GRT leaders set up this year’s schedule of productions, they decided that, every other season, they should do a classic play, Panciera says. Shows like that don’t always make money for the organization, but they provide a wonderful challenge for the actors.

So which classic to do in 2018? Well, GRT had done another Tennessee Williams drama, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” in 2014, and, as Panciera says, “It was well received, and we thought, well, let’s do another Williams.’”

As for Williams’ script, Panciera says, “It is so specific about everything that you do. Every piece of blocking is there. He talks about every prop … He talks about what they’re wearing.”

There are other challenges, too. While GRT’s productions generally require about 15 sound cues, “Streetcar” has more than 40, Panciera notes. There are phones ringing and church bells chiming, and Blanche keeps hearing music.

As for the show’s message, Panciera sees it this way: “No matter how low you go, there is always a way to climb the hill again, that failure doesn’t mean the end. It means the beginning of something new.”

“A Streetcar Named Desire,” Groton Senior Center, Route 117; through April 21; 7:30 p.m. Fri. and Sat., 2 p.m. Sun.; $18 at door, $15 for seniors and in advance; (860) 629-8478, grotontheatre.org.