Writer’s Notes

Thief |

“Thief was never going to be an easy play to write, nor will it necessarily be easy to watch.

“Thief is about Sailor, a victim who refuses to see himself as that. Who fights back. Sailor has been abused all his life. At 27 however, he is now in control of the circumstances that created the ‘monster’ he has become. At least that’s what he believes.

“Set in a timeless world of dockside taverns and the cobbled shadow-lands of foggy ports, the story charts one man’s survival. A squalid survival some still find themselves embracing even now, as much as society would like to deny that is the case.

“Importantly, however, Thief has no message. It’s there to provoke thought and discussion and hopefully, entertain, albeit on a extremely dark level.”

“Thief is a study of abuse, and of the transience of beauty. It explores our need to project our emotional and physical desires onto a subject without knowing them. Attraction, chemistry, first impressions, aesthetics. We all live by these things, but delve beneath the surface and what we find can be very different.”

“Sailor is a man struggling to maintain his last ounce of humanity and self-respect, while doing what it takes to survive the brutal underworld of civilised society. His ethos of subverting accepted moral behaviour and self-expression is drawn loosely from the works and life of Jean Genet.”

“The imagery of Thief was inspired by a number of sources. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s use of saturated warm colours in the 1982 West German-French movie version of Querelle spoke to me, as did the romanticised sailors of numerous Jean Paul Gautier Le Male ad campaigns. They, in turn, rekindled memories of the rich works of French artists Pierre et Gilles.”

“As a play, Thief has no message other than to make the viewer think about their own desires and prejudices. To enhance the experience, audience members will be seated individually, away from the distraction of those they came with, so that they engage solely with Sailor, becoming immersed in his plight.”