Critiques and suggestions are unbiased and merchandise are independently chosen. Postmedia might earn an affiliate fee from purchases made by hyperlinks on this web page.
Article content material
Calgary playwright Arun Lakra admits to being a little bit of a thief.
When pressed, Lakra, who wrote Vertigo’s new thriller Heist, concedes he might have stolen a web page or two from Ocean’s 11, the granddaddy of heist thrillers, whether or not or not it’s the 1960 Rat Pack model, or the 2001 George Clooney remake, its sequels and all its imitators.
Article content material
“After the darkness of the pandemic, I figured what all of us want once we go to the theatre is a few nice twisty enjoyable such as you get from performs like The Mousetrap, Sleuth and Deathtrap. That’s why I made a decision to strive my hand at writing a enjoyable, edge-of-your-seat, twisty, thriller thriller,” says Lakra whose Heist runs at Vertigo till Feb. 25.
Commercial 2
Article content material
“Ocean’s 11, in all its incarnations, is certainly one of my favorite cinema thrillers. When now we have a film evening, if my spouse, son and daughter and I can’t agree on a brand new movie, we’ll watch one of many Ocean’s. I’m fairly sure we’re not the one followers of that franchise, in order that was my start line for Heist. I wished to see if we may truly pull off a heist on stage.”
Lakra insists the much less viewers members learn about his play earlier than heading all the way down to Vertigo, the extra enjoyable they may have, so he refuses to disclose something concerning the plot past saying, “My gang are jewel thieves they usually solely steal actually costly, actually flashy jewels.
“Thriller audiences are actually savvy. They’ve seen a lot that my job as a author was to attempt to keep one step forward of them. So there actually will probably be twists and turns they don’t see coming.”
As a author, Lakra’s actual ardour has been screenwriting.
In 2022, Lakra was a quarterfinalist for the Academy of Movement Image’s prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting along with his Fortunato Heist, the movie model of Heist. The next 12 months, with Fortunato Heist, he was the winner of the Blacklist/Warby Parker $20,000 Imaginative and prescient Grant.
Commercial 3
Article content material
“I truly wrote the stage and screenplay variations of Heist concurrently. When Vertigo invited me to attend rehearsals of Heist, I assumed I’d simply be sitting again watching all of it occur. From the primary day, all these unimaginable artists (Vertigo’s creative director) Jack Grinhaus had assembled confirmed me there was nonetheless work to be executed. I turned a part of the evolution of the script. Now I’ve to return to my screenplay and incorporate what I discovered, and all that they’ve dropped at it.”
The backstage Heist group consists of director Haysam Kadri, set and projection designer Scott Reid, costume designer Rebecca Toon, lighting designer Anton deGroot, and sound designer and composer Darren Younger. The on-stage group consists of Griffin Cork, Praneet Akilla, Anna Dalgleish, Charlie Gould, Alexander Ariate and Elinor Holt.
Lakra first made his mark on the Calgary theatre scene in 2013 along with his mind-bending romantic thriller Sequence. On the time, he was higher generally known as one of many metropolis’s foremost ophthalmologists.
“From the time I used to be in junior highschool, I knew I wished to enter drugs. Someday in my fourth 12 months of med college, I observed an advert for a brief story contest. I wrote one, submitted it and received the competition. To this present day I’ve a sense I used to be the one entrant, but it surely spurred me on. I began to indulge that different aspect of me and took a writing course at Ryerson Faculty.”
Lakra has been juggling his two passions for greater than 20 years, however, two years in the past, he closed his clinic and has been pursuing his writing full time.
“I’m in a heist mode. I’ve varied heist-related initiatives in varied levels of growth. About 5 years in the past, I noticed the comedy The Play That Goes Incorrect in New York and instantly began envisioning what would occur if that one collided with Ocean’s 11. I name it Broadway Heist and it may find yourself being my subsequent stage play. I’ll be heisting a bit from two fully totally different sources for that one.”
Article content material
