When Arun Lakra was first approached to write a heist play, his initial reaction was, “Thank you, but no.” Heist movies, à la the sleek Ocean’s series or the magic-filled Now You See Me, are plentiful. But a heist play?

“I couldn’t figure out how to do that,” Lakra said ahead of Heist’s U.S. premiere at Arizona Theatre Company (running in Tucson Nov. 30-Dec. 20 and in Phoenix Jan. 10-25, 2026). In a film, he said, “You can use a camera to direct an audience and have these close-ups and all that—how do you do that for the stage?”

But what if he could turn the perceived obstacle—that an audience can see every move onstage—to his advantage? Lakra said he discovered the nucleus of the play, which had its premiere last year at Calgary’s Vertigo Theatre, when he thought about how movies like Ocean’s Eleven and The Sixth Sense let audiences think they understand what’s going on, only to learn that something else was going on all along.

“We are actually staging the heist genre in its full glory,” said ATC artistic and executive director Matt August, also the director charged with bringing Heist’s jewel-thief spectacle to Arizona stages. (Lakra hinted about the use of drones, aerialists, and lasers, but August was mum on ATC’s specific design plans.) A major hope, both August and Lakra said, is that a story in this genre can help bring new audiences, potentially first-timers, to the theatre.

As Lakra put it, “I came from a place of trying to see if I could put something out there that I could actually sit in the audience with my kids, with my parents who are in their 80s, and also have my wife and I enjoy it as well. That was really the primary thing for me: just to try to put something out there that I could enjoy with my family.”

If Heist can pick that lock, that would be a feat indeed.

Jerald Raymond Pierce is the managing editor of American Theatre.