Tennessee Williams’ play “The Glass Menagerie” portrays an American family in the crises following World War I, where the father’s absence and past frustrations intensify the difficulties faced by Amanda and her children, Tom and Laura. Under such circumstances, imagination emerges as the key factor connecting the characters and enabling them to cope with harsh realities. Decoding a theatrical work—given its reliance on diverse signs—requires an approach that accounts for both its sign-oriented nature and the multiplicity of its signs. Accordingly, this study adopts a combined framework of Ferdinand de Saussure’s and Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic theories and categorizes signs in terms of their stage manifestation as visual, non-visual, or intermediary. Employing a descriptive-analytical method and qualitative data from library sources, the study pursues three objectives: 1) to examine the characters’ interaction with imagination and reality; 2) to compare the types of signs, based on their stage appearance, in explaining this interaction; and 3) to evaluate the capacity of the combined semiotic approach in clarifying the relationship between imagination and reality. The research questions are: 1) How does the analysis of signs reflect the psychological traits of the characters and their interaction with imagination and reality? 2) What distinctions exist among iconic, non-iconic, and intermediary signs in this representation? 3) What added value does integrating Saussure’s and Peirce’s theories provide in explaining this relationship? The findings reveal that imagination and reality are not merely in conflict; rather, “reconstructing reality through imagination” and “integrating imagination and reality” represent alternative forms of their interplay. Furthermore, the predominance of iconic signs underscores their central role in the play’s meaning-making process. Ultimately, the integrated semiotic approach enables the interpretation of signs as a unified whole within Williams’ symbolic play “The Glass Menagerie”.