‘Working’ in the Abstract, Playing Out Reality : Theater: Laguna Playhouse’s take on the show is different than Broadway’s, says director Sha Newman.

“Work ethic means what?” says Studs Terkel. “It means delight, pride in the craft. Pride in what you do.”

He proved his point in his collection of interviews with Americans about their jobs. “Working: People Talking About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do” was a best seller published in 1974 and was turned into a perennially revived musical by Stephen Schwartz with a score by Schwartz, Craig Carnelia, Micki Grant, Mary Rodgers and Susan Birkenhead, and James Taylor.

One of several current local revivals of “Working” opens tonight at the Moulton Theater under the direction of Sha Newman, whose award-winning guidance of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and “Evita”--both of which for the Fullerton Civic Light Opera--will be remembered by Southland audiences.

Is this an ordinary revival of “Working”? Not entirely.

“My concept of the show,” Newman says, “is a little bit different than they did it on Broadway. I feel the work is a very abstract piece. You’re talking to people all over the nation. When Terkel wrote the book, he just traveled, and he spoke to people from all different walks of life. Blue collar, white collar, management. He listened to all these people, their hopes, their dreams, their grievances.”

The one thing that connects the interviews is that pride that Terkel mentions.

“All of us feel that way,” Newman says. “Is there anything that we’ve done that made a difference? The people in the show are coming from all these different places in the nation and having their moment of being interviewed. It’s one special moment when someone asks them, ‘So, what do you do? What are your dreams?’ All of a sudden they have a sense of importance.”

Newman thinks audiences will relate to the insights of these ordinary people, such as the waitress who loves her work and fantasizes that she’s on stage, always performing. That’s how she perceives her work, not necessarily how we see her every day. Most people would think she must be miserable on her feet all day.

“Yet,” Newman says, “she had an incredible sense of personal pride and a refusal to be demeaned.”

Terkel says the same thing.

“It’s a question of respect,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author growled past his ever-present cigar during a recent visit to Southern California. “It’s hard for a spot welder in an auto plant, standing there with his 20-pound welding gun, shooting spots into a revolving snake, the assembly line. So he has to fantasize a great deal. And also, pride in the product. Think of the old cabinetmaker. He did the whole thing, the old Danish cabinetmaker. He made the whole thing. He took pride in it.”

Terkel said he didn’t want to make TV a villain, but he mentioned the tube as contributing to non-participation in the community.

“The kids in the ‘60s,” he recalled, “had a phrase, ‘participatory democracy.’ It was a very good term. There’s little participation today. When you don’t participate, you become a thing. You count when you take part in something, even if it’s a losing battle.”

Terkel said he is very conscious of the differences in the workplace since his book and the musical version were conceived.

“The difference, of course, is runaway technology, and the manner (in which) it’s been used by the people who run things. You become more and more of a binary number, a figure. I’m not in favor of noise. But even in a newspaper--in the old days there was excitement and noise, and typewriters. Now there’s silence. Everybody’s staring into the windows of his or her individual computer. Like voyeurs peering through a window to see a naked girl. They’re next to each other, but planets apart.”

But he and Newman agree that most of the stories told in “Working” still could be told today.

“Have you been to the Midwest?” Newman asks. “Have you been to the South? If you go to a small town, there are still people who haven’t changed their minds about things in hundreds of years. They’re still talking about the same information. Things have not changed.”

She speculates that although many people will say we have come a long way, others will say we haven’t gone anywhere at all.

Ask the workers, Newman says, and they’ll tell the truth.

“It goes back to what I said, just being asked to share a part of their lives that they normally would never have been asked to share. They say it in the first number:

“ ‘Hey, somebody, don’t you want to hear the story of my life? And, somebody, please pay me a million dollars so I don’t have to go do it anymore.’ ” * The Laguna Playhouse production of “Working” opens tonight at 8 at the Moulton Theater, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. $23-$28. Through May 28. (714) 494-8021.