SHORT TAKES : Winger Going Back to Nebraska

OMAHA — Actress Debra Winger’s ties with Nebraska resurfaced with her casting in the lead role of a play at a small non-profit children’s theater.

Winger, who has been romantically linked with U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, (D-Neb.), will star in Robert Bly’s new play, “Tattercoats,” at the Emmy Gifford Children’s Theater in 1992, artistic director James Larson said.

Larson said Winger wasn’t contractually bound to the show yet, but she’s trying to arrange her motion-picture shooting schedule to let her perform in the play’s monthlong run in March, 1992.

She telephoned her acceptance in December, he said.

“She is doing this as a personal, artistic commitment,” Larson said. “As a small, non-profit theater we can’t afford the kind of salary a major motion-picture star like Debra commands.”

Winger and Kerrey met in 1983 while filming the movie “Terms of Endearment” in Lincoln. Kerrey then was Nebraska’s governor.