Practically everyone knows the routine by now. As scenes of the city flash across the screen the voice over begins and the phrase, This is the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a house… shoots through the speakers.

MTV’s Real World series has become synonymous with voyeurism, as people tune in each week to watch other people living their ordinary lives, with periodic stops for advertisements selling us something. Now that same concept rains down on Carbondale.

The UnReal World, directed by Tracy Stephenson, is a play poking a little fun at the idea of how media has become so ingrained into our culture that the lines between reality and television are becoming increasingly thinner.

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The premise is simple. How real can something be when someone’s life is taped, edited, set to music and broadcast for the purpose of entertainment in order to raise ratings?

This play is the story about real people who become performance figures, Stephenson said. This is a way to critique and to laugh at ourselves at the same time.

The play looks and feels like a television show. The couch is decorated with a multitude of colored pillows, the kitchen table has chairs that do not match, a picture of Kurt Cobain hangs on the wall watching over everyone like Big Brother, and a fish tank sits in the corner, a perfect metaphor of how seven people are trapped by their surroundings as others watch them for nothing more than pleasure. There is even music pumped in by U2, R.E.M. and other groups, giving the play a television quality to it.

The cast is reminiscent of characters that might be on the real show:Lucky, a guitar-carrying, Elvis-loving ladies man; Star, a soft-spoken poet who has trouble meeting the others; Jack, a calm, relaxed character who spends most of his time reading; Pete, a guy who lives for comic-book superheroes; Daoud, a laid-back rapper from the city; Eve, an image-conscious obsessive-compulsive type; and Caitlyn, a television-loving person who has had way too much caffeine in her lifetime.

I wanted to show how easy it is for someone to fall into a stereotype, Stephenson said. It is critical how their lives are edited because they only look the way the editors want them to look.

What makes the story a little more unusual is that there was no set script for the actors to follow. Stephenson had a basic concept of what she wanted to happen in the play, but virtually all of the dialogue was made up by the actors as they went along in rehearsal. As a result, the actors had a lot of leeway as to how their characters evolved.

A lot of my sarcastic side came out in my character, Kathleen Spring, who plays Eve, said. There is one scene where I come in from working out and have to be really sarcastic with Lucky. That was almost all Kathleen talking there.

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Jack is someone I could see myself being, but he is more cynical then I am, Keith Pounds, who plays Jack, said. He appreciates the subtle things, and I think he secretly likes all the attention, but I don’t think he would make it on the real show. Jack is the balance to all of the media heads in the show.

The difference with the play is that instead of the cameras in your face 24 hours a day, the actors are now portraying their characters in front of an audience.

The camera is something you can play up to, but with an audience you get immediate feedback, Sean McElroy, who plays Lucky, said.

In a way, we get along better than the real show because their entire lives are improvised and we have a basic script, Spring said.

The UnReal World plays tonight at 8 p.m. at the Kleinau Theatre on the second floor of the Communications Building, and runs through Oct.14. General Admission is $4, $2 with a student I.D.