A CHANGE OF CLIMATE FOR NORWEGIAN DIRECTOR

The question was innocent but very much in the spirit swirling around the Los Angeles Theatre Center these last days before its opening. Stein Winge looked up and said, “The New York steak. What is it like?”

Winge was new to everything around him, like an avid Tolkien reader who finds himself suddenly transported to Middle Earth. It’s all familiar, but a bit weird just the same.

Winge is the Norwegian director hired by the Theatre Center to stage Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” which opens tonight.

He’s artistic director of the Torshov Theater in Oslo, a part of Norway’s national theater. He has a big reputation in Europe. He’s won important Norwegian awards. He’s directed 65 major productions, including operas and musicals, most of them classics.

He looks boyish, but not in the way many American men do. At 44, Winge’s a big-boned man whose puffy eyes and burgeoning paunch set off his movie-actor good looks. His boyishness on this occasion was an expression of mannerly trepidation.

“America is so far ,” he said, with a tone of amazement. “I have grown up with all the pictures. Before I got the proposal, I had thought to come. It’s so big . Flying over this city, it doesn’t end. In Oslo, I live three minutes from the theater. In the mornings I take a ferry for 20 minutes. I go to the pier and have coffee and muffins with marmalade.” He shook his head.

But a man with a purpose has a place to go. If, as he maintains, “good actors are good actors all over the world,” he had a few surprises here as well.

“I was horrified the first day in the theater,” he said. “I didn’t know what an audition is. In Norway, you have established companies. The theater board tells me, ‘You have to take this actor. He hasn’t worked in two years.’ Everybody works. The bad thing is that some actors get lazy.

“But here? How can you tell what people can do in a few minutes? I saw 200 actors for a quarter-hour each. It was terrible. I thought it was so embarrassing to ask someone to go out and come back again--people older than yourself. I felt it was kind of judging. After a time you feel a little arrogant. . . .

“It was easy to see the actors who only do television and movies. They come up to your face to speak; they have no projection. But most of the actors challenge you. There’s a tension that builds up from working all the time. They’re open and receptive. They communicate. I’m not being polite to say I’m grateful to be here and have this opportunity--they give something to me; I give something to them. When I get to Norway, I think I’ll have different expectations.”

(Winge isn’t a shy communicator himself. A theater staffer told of how, to make a point in rehearsal about being exposed, he stripped and poured a bucket of water over his head.)

Winge briefly discussed the organization of Norwegian theater. “The National Theater in Norway is 85% subsidized by the government (the population of Norway is 4 million). I believe that the state has to take responsibility for culture. A culture without culture is meaningless. The Torshov seats 200 and costs the American equivalent of $300,000 a year to run. We play all year long, except summers. Theater is the most important art form in Norway. TV is new, so you don’t have the problem of actors leaving a production to do TV or film. I have eight full-time actors. When I need more, I draw from the National’s companies. Timian is our designer. We’ve worked together for 10 years.”

The man he referred to is Timian Alsaker, the Theatre Center’s head designer, who first brought Winge to the attention of artistic producing director Bill Bushnell and producer Diane White. White went to Norway to see Winge’s “Galileo” and “The Good Woman of Sechuan,” which led to the invitation. “I said no at first,” Winge recalled. “But then I realized I can’t say no. You have to take the challenge to go.”

Winge discussed his affinity for the classics and the possible reason why he has such a good reputation for mounting them.

“When I first did classics, I did them in period,” he said. “Now I try to have a mix. Shakespeare, the Greeks, I try to throw them into modern consciousness. I don’t say, ‘Go silent and don’t disturb them.’ They want to be disturbed. A lot of Shakespeare’s plays were written in 14 days. If you approach them too carefully, nothing happens. You have to have courage. You have to use your brain, your taste, your actors, yourself. You can’t have an audience say, ‘I’m looking at a classical play.’ It has to say, ‘I’m looking at people.’ ”

Of Chekhov and “Three Sisters,” he noted, “I’ve seen so much dull Chekhov. But he’s dangerous. To discover him, you must forget him and start out with a bunch of actors to find him. He’s a funny, dangerous man. ‘Three Sisters’ is hysterical from beginning to end. He has so many things. You discover something new every minute.

“To me, ‘Three Sisters’ is about people who don’t use themselves. They’re young; they have all these possibilities. But they don’t deal with their possibilities. When the play has ended, they haven’t developed in four years. They’re not used to doing things for themselves. Natasha is the counterpoint, the balance. Is she the Third World? She’s the hard woman. The others talk. She does small things, but she does them.”

The breakfast on the Norwegian pier Winge had alluded to earlier is a prelude to a chill morning swim. “You jump in the water and go under, and you become a new human being,” he said. “Every day it’s important to become a new human being.”