Bibi Andersson is undoubtedly best known in America for her roles in such intensely moving Ingmar Bergman films as Persona and Wild Strawberries. But she has had an equally significant career in the theatre. She first worked with Bergman at Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre (the Dramaten) in 1955, and 40 years later she's still acting for him with the same company. This time she plays Paulina in his production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, which plays at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, May 31-June 3, as part of the four-month-long citywide Bergman Festival. Given Andersson's enduring collaboration with Bergman, it's hardly surprising that she is able to offer insight into the director's, as well as her own, working methods.

Bergman's technique, as she's experienced it, remains essentially the same regardless of what medium he's working in. Andersson, long one of Sweden's leading actresses, has worked with Bergman on about 25 films, plays, and TV movies. "He's very careful with actors," she says. "He's very skilled in creating surroundings that are safe and good, and he does the same thing in film and theatre. He is very easy to work with. He is demanding, yes, but that's necessary. He is also demanding on himself."

The last films they made together were The Touch (1971) and Scenes From a Marriage, (1974) which was pared down from a television series. But Andersson thinks her most important Bergman role was in the 1966 classic Persona, opposite Liv Ullmann. Bergman chose to stop directing feature films after 1983's Fanny and Alexander. Since then, he has focused on theatre and television work, and he completed his autobiography The Magic Lantern, in 1987.

The Winter's Tale allows Bergman and Andersson to show a lighter side that may surprise moviegoers who know only his somber meditations on life and death like The Seventh Seal—an adaptation of Wood Painting, the first play they worked on together. Bergman has also made romantic comedies, including Smiles of a Summer Night. Like that film, The Winter's Tale has plenty of funny moments, many of which were improvised during rehearsals. "Some evenings I try to be comic," Andersson says, "but I don't know how effective I am. It depends how I feel. My character is basically a strong woman."

On Humour and the Dark Side

According to the actress, Bergman has a wonderful sense of humour, though he doesn't think that he does. In fact, she calls Bergman "a crazy man, because he's very mixed—and aren't we all? Don't make a saint out of him. I don't want him to disappear from being a human being. He's still vulnerable, and I like that."

Andersson can be funny, too, but she realizes that her affinity for the director stems from their shared ability to forge art from dark, sometimes depressing, subject matter. "I also like dark sides and complications," she confesses. "After all, life is very sometimes." She has little patience for those who are wary of Bergman's work because of its generally serious nature. "If they're scared of him, they're scared of their own dark side," she says.

Bergman is going through a particularly dark time now, Andersson reports, because his wife has been ailing. (Following the interview, Bergman's wife lost her bout with stomach cancer and passed away on May 20.) That's one reason he won't be coming here for the festival, which opened May 5. He also shuns publicity and almost never does interviews.

Over the years, Bergman has become so important in Sweden that he's practically an institution unto himself New York City's Bergman Festival, encompassing 350 events at cultural institutions all over town—including films, television work, plays' exhibitions, talks, and the publication of a new book - solidifies his tremendous international importance as a film, TV, and theatre director.

"He's different now than he was when he was young," Andersson says. "When he was young, he was sort of rebellious. Now, he's rebellious as a person, but he represents the institution. He's so much a part of that theatre and the tradition. He wants to keep the tradition, and that's very radical in his viewpoint, because he could do other things. But he really wants to do things that educate." The education goes both for audiences and for actors, who am We to perfect their training by working on the classics. Most recently, Bergman staged Moliere's The Misanthrope," which may come to BAM next year.

Cultural Continuity

Andersson hopes that subsidized theatres like the Dramaten won't suffer from budget-cutting, as arts organizations have in the United States. "The continuity of cultural life is very valuable—especially now, when Sweden has a difficult economic situation," the actress notes. "And this festival really gives a broad picture of Swedish culture over a long period of time." In addition to Bergman's work, the Museum of Modern Art offers a retrospective on Alf Sjöberg, who directed Bergman's first script, and the American Museum of the Moving Image has a series on Sven Nykvist, Bergman's longtime cinematographer.

This staging of The Winter's Tale is a kind of tribute to the Swedish writer Jonas Almqvist. a lover of Shakespeare whose songs open and close both acts. Bergman presents the story as a play within a play, with the conceit being that the performance is given for a German family in their castle at Christmastime. "It's like an overture and an epilogue," Andersson explains. "He's just given it a frame." She declined to give away the ending, however. The Winter's Tale will be followed at BAM by Bergman's staging of Yukio Mishima's Madame de Sade. Both are performed in Swedish, with headset translation. One might assume that such highbrow fare directed by Ingmar Bergman and performed in Swedish in Brooklyn would be a tough sell. But, in fact, most of the best seats for the two plays were snapped up by BAM subscribers almost immediately after going on sale in February.

To those who hesitate to get acquainted, or reacquainted, with Bergman, Andersson insists that his stage and screen work should not be missed. "Give him a chance," she advises. "There aren't many directors who have a lifespan in which they fulfill their craft. There are a few, like Fellini or Bergman or Huston—people who keep working until they're perfect—and then it's a gift to us."