EVELYN ©rC
JACOB >

spotlight feature

Old
friends
play new
games

S THE SAYING goes,

business and pleasure

don’t mix. In that
case, playwright Karen
Wikberg and director Sue
Astley are the exception that
proved the rule.

They're best friends and the
dual brains behind Fair Game, a
new play at the Arts Club
Theatre’s Granville tsland stage.

The two North Shore residents
met at UBC's Musical Society
(MUSSOC) 20 years ago, when
Wikberg was singing in the chorus
and Astley was pursuing a stage
career,

Astley, whose directorial credits
include the post-nuclear musical
Last Call and Sex Tips for Modern
Girls, went on to act in various
amateur theatre productions and
worked as a tour guide for the
Vancouver Stock Exchange before
joining Tamahnous Theatre.

Wikberg took up playwriting
at UBC, but it wasn’t until 10 years
later — during which time she
gave birth to two daughters — that
she began writing her first play.

in 1987 the two joined forces on
Wikberg’s Old Flames (which has
yet to be produced), a play about
three desperate women who travel
to a desert island to quit smoking.

They've been together since the
word ‘’go" on Fair Game, and
now both of them say they can’t
imagine working with anyone else.

“twas worried about working
with a best friend and being able
to keep our friendship intact,’
says Astley, 43. “t think we've
done very well. We were deter-
mined to work out any difficulties
and so far we haven't had any ma-
jor disagreements.”

“| think i would have a nard
time working with another direc-
tor,’ Wikberg, 42, says. ‘Because
we're close friends, Sue really un-
derstands some points of inter-
pretation. It’s really important for a
writer to trust the director,
because you put your work in
their hands. We'll collaborate for-
ever now,” she laughs.

Fair Game is about a heartless
stock promotor named Janet
(Marlene O’Brien). ‘The deal,’’
says Wikberg, ‘‘is everything to
her."

Janet's all-consuming thirst for
success fsads her to dump first her
lawyer-husband and then her
business partner, and to mistreat
her friends and her new lover.

“Fair Game deais with the
morai and ethical dilemmas in-
volved in business and what you
have to sacrifice to attain your
goals. Oiten times it’s relation-
ships,’’ notes Astley.

Wikberg says the attitudes of the
late ‘80s — materialism, greed,
over-consumption, — all symbol-
ized by the stock market — were
her inspiration for Fair Game.

After 20 years of friendship
you'd think they’d have each
other's life history down pat, but
during the interview Wikberg and
Astley make the mutual discovery

See Play page 31

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Wednesday. December 12, 1990 - North Shore News ~ 29

PLAYWRIGHT KAREN
Wikberg (right) and director
Sue Astley are the brains
behind Fair Game, currently

playing at the Arts Club
Theatre.

NEWS photo Mike Wakefield

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