Imagine experiencing the edge-of-your-seat thrill of a fast-paced heist film like "Ocean's Eleven," only it's not a film.
It's on stage, happening in real time with all the high-tech wizardry of the filmed version.
That was the thought going through playwright Arun Lakra's mind when he wrote "Heist," which he describes as a "cinematic theatrical experience."
"I wanted to write something that I wanted to see sitting beside my kids and my parents, and just something which I thought could be a nice, fun, family experience, but something out of the ordinary," recalled the father of two teens. "Because we are all such fans of 'Ocean's Eleven' and the heist genre in general, I aspired to write something along those lines."
"Heist" checked all those boxes for Lakra, who was commissioned in 2021 by Chad Rabinovitz of Indiana's Bloomington Playwrights Project.
Playwright Arun Lakra, center, sits in last week while Arizona Theatre Company's Kasser Family Artistic Director Matt August, right, leads a rehearsal of Lakra's play "Heist." ATC is doing the U.S. premiere of the work, which had its world premiere in Lakra's adopted hometown of Calgary, Alberta.
The play had its world premiere in Lakra's adopted Canadian hometown of Calgary in 2024 and is getting its U.S. premiere with Arizona Theatre Company beginning Sunday, Nov. 30, at the Temple of Music and Art.
"When I read it, it was a very exciting and unique play," said Matt August, ATC's Kasser Family artistic director. "I kept looking at it and kept thinking about it."
When August pitched ATC for the U.S. premiere and said he wanted to direct it, Lakra said he got pretty excited.
”This organization is an incredibly unique and unusual theater company," he said, noting ATC is one of the only regional companies in the country that produces full seasons in two cities, Tucson and Phoenix.
"The really cool part is that Matt seemed to like the show so much that he wanted to direct it himself, and Matt’s experience and talent and reputation is massive. I felt really privileged to have not only Arizona Theatre Company doing the show but Matt directing it," Lakra said.
Before coming to ATC in January 2023, August, who directs film, opera and theatre, had built an enviable résumé that included directing "How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical" on Broadway. (Broadway in Tucson brought the North American tour of the show to Centennial Hall earlier this month.)
Lakra said he initially struggled trying to bring the thrill and glamour of "Ocean's Eleven" to the stage.
"I kept encountering these obstacles because in my head, how do you translate what you see on stage with the glitz and the glamour and the Clooney and the Pitts?" he said, referring to "Ocean's Eleven" stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt. "How do you translate all that onto a really confined space on a stage and we don't have the benefits of having sneaky camera angles or misdirects or being able to focus the audience attention away from something or towards something so specifically."
And then he had a revelation that what he saw initially as an obstacle could also be an opportunity.
"Here we had a captive audience watching the stage with hopefully no cell phones or other distractions, and they were watching everything unfold right before their eyes," he explained in a phone call with August from the ATC rehearsal hall last Monday.
"And I thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we could actually pull off a heist that they're watching in a sneaky way and surprise them at the end, because they will have seen the whole thing from start to finish.' And I don't want to say too much more at risk of giving things away. But once I zeroed in on that, then I was able to crack this story about how can I actually attract the audience's attention and have them see something really cool that they haven't seen on stage before."
To do that requires lasers, drone sequences and aerial stunts that push the boundaries of what we expect to experience from live theater.
August admitted the play is "a heavy financial lift" for ATC.
"We've had to ask ourselves a number of times, is this going to give us the bang for our buck that we hope? In some cases, the answer is yes, and in some cases, the answer has been no," he said.
Ethan Henry, center, and Matthew Floyd Miller, far right, in the rehearsal room for Arizona Theatre Company’s "Heist," which opens Sunday, Nov. 30.
"Heist" is the story of a meticulously planned jewel theft where every second counts but nothing goes as planned and every team member has a secret, which opens them up to betrayal and double-crossings. As the plot twists and turns, loyalties shift, blurring the line between the player and the played.
"This is definitely a play that people are going to get to the end of and they're going to go, 'Oh my God, I need to come back and I need to see this again'," August said. "I like to think of this play the way that I experienced the movie 'The Usual Suspects'."
"What's kind of fun is that we give the audience some clues and breadcrumbs along the way so if people are leaning forward and interested and motivated, they can try and play along and try and figure out who is working with whom, and who the good guys and bad guys are," Lakra said. "And it becomes a bit of an adventure for them in some sort of an interactive way, if they're wanting to pay attention and invest in it."
"Heist" follows ATC's world premiere last spring of "Bob & Jean: A Love Story" and the 2023 premiere of the revised adaptation of Leslie Bricusse’s 1992 stage version of his 1970 film "Scrooge!"
UA musical theater grad Naphtali Yaakov Curry comes home to star as Donkey in Broadway In Tucson's presentation of "Shrek the Musical" on March 6-7.
