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INTRUDER - INTRUZ

We've reached our goal. | Osiągnęliśmy nasz cel.

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INTRUDER - INTRUZ

INTRUDER - INTRUZ

INTRUDER - INTRUZ

INTRUDER - INTRUZ

INTRUDER - INTRUZ

We've reached our goal. | Osiągnęliśmy nasz cel.

We've reached our goal. | Osiągnęliśmy nasz cel.

We've reached our goal. | Osiągnęliśmy nasz cel.

We've reached our goal. | Osiągnęliśmy nasz cel.

Remi Rachuba
Remi Rachuba
Remi Rachuba
Remi Rachuba
1 Campaign |
LONDON, United Kingdom
$10,208 USD $10,208 USD by 233 backers
$10,145 USD by 229 backers on Mar 7, 2020

The Gist

So finally after 11 years of working on my autobiographical bilingual (English-Polish) one-man play titled INTRUDER|INTRUZ, my dreams of putting the play on are coming to fruition. The play tells a story of a young Polish man who comes to Scotland to make his dreams come true and become an actor but is a victim of traumatic events. 

Remi's story ... 

Since I remember I've always wanted to be an actor. I actually never remember saying it but I remember my father replying 'Yes, you're going to be an actor  .......... after they burn down all the theatres'. Though, I always wanted to do it in English. After many disappointments in Poland and being told by quite a few professionals that I would never make it as an actor, I received an offer from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Yes, but it took 14 years to get that offer.

At the drama school, I ran to my classes early morning to do my daily warm-ups but an incident in Edinburgh in March 2009 during the spring semester had a big impact on it. The same evening, I put it all on paper as a way of getting out my frustration. I wrote it 'being in the moment' and never thought I would ever make a play out of it. Actually, I never wanted to come back to the written account of the event and I put it in a drawer. It was that evening when the first 14 pages of INTRUDER were written. 

Intruder | Intruz ... and the influences

The account of the incident in Edinburgh became the foundation for my passion project. Originally, I wrote it in English with Polish elements and there is now a Polish version with English elements titled INTRUZ. I translated the piece into Polish as I wanted to share my story with so many Poles living in England. 

The play is non-linear because I wanted it to have a structure of some of my favourite films e.g. Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Magnolia' or Christopher Nolan's 'Inception'. But it was Tom Ford's 'Nocturnal Animals' that helped me with the final re-structuring of the piece.   

INTRUDER|INTRUZ is very dynamic with the plot shifting in a split-second. It's interactive and performed in intimate spaces for the audience to be inside the events. It’s a very touching, moving, brutal, and forgiving tale with the elements of black humour that would keep the audience rooted to see how it is played out.  Very original, important and timely and with its current themes, it deserves to be told.

Why is this play important?

 mental health

anxiety

 forgiveness

  restorative justice system

 what it's like to be an immigrant

what it's like to be a victim of violence

 finally, making your dreams come true

these themes of the play came up very organically and to be quite honest life wrote them. I found it very interesting and to some extent therapeutic to work on the play especially during the initial development of it in Glasgow in 2012. Looking at your own life and being told of certain patterns of behaviour is fascinating and made me think a lot about how I behave and what I do. Taking certain emotions e.g. feeling anxious, for granted and then being told, 'No, it's not ok, to feel this way' was very liberating especially when I met people who went through similar incidents and experienced similar emotions and feelings.

What added to the whole complexity of the story was the fact that my first language is Polish and I studied the English language and lived in Scotland when it all happened. Bilingualism is a key part of the whole story. 'In a crisis, does my mind think in English or in Polish?', 'Is it English or Polish I feel more comfortable with when anxious?', 'Is it Polish or English my brain goes automatically by default when anxious?' - I still keep asking myself.

On top of that, it all happened in Scotland, not Poland, and not having gone through similar experiences before, I wasn't aware of certain procedures and support that was available in Scotland. And since some of the procedures and regulations are non-existent in Poland, I thought, that's how it is in every country. That added an extra layer of confusion. 

I feel this play is important because all kinds of things happen to us, good or bad, and we still need to fulfil our potential and do things that we want to achieve. I feel watching the play will give the audience hope and motivation to overcome certain difficulties no matter what has happened to them.

Reactions

Feedback from the BBC Writersroom

This is an excellent and original monologue spoken straight from the heart. The storytelling is rapid and urgent – it is told like the narrator's life depends on it. In a story that jumps backwards and forwards in time, between countries and languages .[...]Though the story is often bleak the language used is buzzy, sparky, poetic and darkly funny. The writing of the monologue itself becomes a redemptive act. The writer has a great eye for detail. Unusual and bizarre details are honed in on. [...] This is a bold and original voice that throws an interesting and heartbreaking light on what it means to be an immigrant and what it means to be a victim of violence.

Peter Arnott, a leading Scottish playwright tweeted

This is a really interesting piece of work ... a comic and painful exploration of the differences between getting mugged in Edinburgh and Warsaw! Written and performed by Remi ... it's a really individual take on the 'Pole in Scotland' experience  ... and dramatically innovative too.

Feedback from rehearsed readings

' ... very powerful stuff; keep working on it; looking forward to seeing next stage...'

'... a very funny and accomplished performance, well done...'

'...well done on a powerful, deeply personal and funny piece of storytelling. I look forward to seeing a full staging, which will help illuminate some of the more nuanced aspects of the piece and make clearer definitions between scene changed + time shifts ...'

'I liked it; fantastic acting; plot keeps you engaged and in suspense; no time to think of anything else apart from the play; excellent dramatic storytelling; worked very well as a piece of theatre'

The journey so far ...

It was David Overend, an assistant director on a short film I was making in Glasgow in 2010, who when told about the incident in Edinburgh and my written account of it expressed an interest in reading the 14 pages. It was the first time I took the pages out of the drawer. We soon worked on it at the Arches in Glasgow. Initially, I found it very difficult to detach myself from all the events to make it a piece of theatre. It seemed to me I was reliving the whole incident again. Upon reflection, I conclude the 11 years that have passed from the incident in Edinburgh were probably the time I needed to put the play on. 

In 2012, Creative Scotland provided funding for an initial development, ran in Glasgow with my late friend and drama school classmate, director Amanda Gaughan, dramaturg Catherine Grosvenor and actor Mark Wood. The subsequent redraft was shortlisted for 2013 Adrian Pagan Playwrighting Competition at London’s King’s Head Theatre. The benefit of being shortlisted was a rehearsed reading of that draft at the Hope Theatre, London, directed by Oscar Toeman. Having received feedback from quite many literary managers after the reading, I began redrafting and redrafting. In 2017 I submitted a new and restructured draft to BBC Writersroom Drama and I couldn't believe that it got to the final shortlist, selected out of nearly 3800 scripts.

In 2018, when the play was getting more momentum, my director friend Amanda Gaughan died tragically. Fortunately, a director friend from a year below at the Conservatoire, Marcus Montgomery Roche, expressed an interest in working on it and between September-December 2018, we held a few rehearsed sharings/readings in London e.g. Dragon's Cafe, Hope Theatre, King's Head Theatre, and in Scotland e.g. North Edinburgh Arts. We collaborated on these readings with Edinburgh-based Asylon Theatre and its Artistic Director, Marta Mari.

 

Soon after I assembled the following

TEAM

Remi Rachuba (actor/writer/producer)  - www.remirachuba.com

Remi, a native Pole, having initially studied teaching English, settled in Scotland and graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. His first professional job was performing in a dreamthinkspeak’s site-specific production titled Before I Sleep at 2010 Brighton Theatre Festival, awarded with Peter Brook Best Ensemble Award and subsequently presented at the Holland Festival in 2011. He has also performed in dreamthinkspeak’s The Rest is Silence, In the Beginning was the End and Absent. Remi was a Scottish servant in a Katie Mitchell's production of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House in 2016 and is coming back to the 3rd revival of the opera in May 2020. Additionally, since graduating he has participated in a production at the Traverse Theatre titled ‘The Builders’ with Plutot La Vie, toured with a T.I.E production of Pinocchio. He also participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Marcus Montgomery Roche (director) - http://marcusroche.strikingly.com

Marcus Roche is currently assistant director to Declan Donnellan at Cheek by Jowl and is touring with their new production of Pericles by William Shakespeare. In 2015 he toured with their production of The Winter's Tale. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and École Philippe Gaulier in Paris. In 2012 he directed The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs by Mike Daisey which received critical acclaim was nominated for a CATS award and the Amnesty International Freedom of Speech Award. For Taganrog Opera and Drama Theatre (Russia) he directed a contemporary movement version of Romeo and Juliet. In 2014 he created Vote For Me which was part of the Early Days Festival at the Arches. He has directed The Night before the Trial a couple of Chekhov's short stories as a curtain-raiser to the Tron Theatre’s production of Three Sisters. He has directed for the Tron Theatre, the Arches, Play, Pie and a Pint, Wee Theatres, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Theatre 503.  He has worked closely with Rachel O’Riorda on Macbeth.

Basia Bińkowska (set/costume designer) - www.basiabinkowska.com

Basia is a performance designer based in London. Before completing a theatre design course in the UK, she trained in fine arts in her native Poland. She is the overall winner of the Linbury Prize for Stage Design 2017 with the winning design for Lyric Hammersmith's production of Othellomacbeth. She was nominated for the Best Designer at the Stage Debut Awards 2018 and has been recently nominated for an Offie for Best Set Design for Blood Knot at Orange Tree. Recent credits include Crooked Dances (Royal Shakespeare Company), Acts of Resistance (Headlong Theatre & Bristol Old Vic), Wolfie (Theatre503), Blood Knot (Orange Tree Theatre), Othellomacbeth (Lyric Hammersmith & Home Manchester), Cuckoo (Soho Theatre), Devil with a Blue Dress (Bunker Theatre), Ivan and the Dogs (Young Vic).

Charles Webber (lighting/sound designer) -  https://www.youtube.com/user/operaNCV

Charles Webber is an electronic artist who has worked in experimental performance for the past 30 years, working across the disciplines of electro-acoustic music, moving image and lighting design, installation, contemporary puppetry, opera, theatre, and dance. Such projects include; Dead Wedding at the 2007 Manchester International Festival and Barbican BITE, with puppeteers Faulty Optic (Lighting Designer / Sound Designer), Fevered Sleep's An Infinite Line at the 2008 Brighton Festival (Sound Designer / Film-maker) and Kanaval by Hubert Essakow in 2011 (Composer / Video Designer). His most recent collaboration has been with choreographer Gary Clarke, working on the 2016 multi-award winning COAL, for which he was nominated for the prestigious Knight of Illumination award for lighting design in the dance category, and most recently the critically acclaimed 2019 work Wasteland (Composer / Lighting Designer / Video Designer).

Cindy Derby (poster designer) - www.cindyderby.com

Cindy Derby is an illustrator and author based out of San Francisco.  How to Walk an Ant is her first picture book (Roaring Brook Press, March 2019). Other picture book titles (as illustrator) include: Climbing Shadows by Shannon Bramer (Groundwood Books, 2019); Outside by New York Times best selling author Deborah Underwood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020); The Boy and the 800-Pound Gorilla by Jackie Azua Kramer (Candlewick Press, 2020). Cindy's background is in puppetry and she has performed all over the world. She received her Master of Arts from The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and was awarded grants from organizations such as The Jim Henson Foundation and Puppet Animation Scotland to assist in the creation of her shows.  In 2014 Cindy won the grand prize for her illustration portfolio at the international SCBWI conference in Los Angeles.

 

Already supported

We've already had amazing support from Polish weekly magazines in London e.g. 'Cooltura','Tydzień Polski', and londynek.net, the most popular website for the Poles in the United Kingdom.

 

1 condition - Why do I need your help?

We have received funding from Arts Council England but one of the conditions of receiving the funding is raising £3600 towards the tour. Without the money, we wouldn't be able to do it. We are planning 14 performances in total (10 performances of the Polish version and 4 performances of the English version) with 4 platform productions in London in April (1,2,3,4) then Bedford, Slough, Bognor Regis, Croydon, Wandsworth,  Manchester.

The money will go towards

  • accommodation and transport
  • venue hire costs
  • set and costumes
  • printing of posters 

 

By supporting INTRUDER|INTRUZ, you would be joining a very prestigious group of mentors supporting the arts, the play with its themes and me, a young artist, emerging, promising artist and helping to make his dreams come true. 

Extra

An additional £4400 would help present the piece in Scotland (as for me this piece belongs to Scotland), Poland e.g. in my home-town Kudowa Zdrój. We have already had an invitation to perform at United Solo Festival in New York but because of financial reasons, we needed to postpone that trip. This money would go towards

  • transport of the team to these places and housing them
  • generating and printing publicity materials and hiring a PR company

 

These efforts are pricy but worth it!  These resources will help get the outreach it deserves.  If we use it well, the tour of England will be a fantastic launching platform to finally bring this play to wider audiences. I can't wait to share the play with audiences.

Keep in touch

Website: www.intruderplay.com

Facebook: @intruderplay

Twitter: @intruderplay

 

Bardzo serdecznie dziękuję

 in advance for supporting INTRUDER|INTRUZ and spreading the word to your network!

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THANK YOU

Currency Conversion $13 USD
£10 GBP
You're now part of INTRUDER! I'm so grateful you're on board and will feature your name as a THANK YOU on our website and social media. |
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
Estimated Shipping
March 2020
67 claimed

BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Currency Conversion $25 USD
£20 GBP
You will be added to the mailing list to see what's happening behind the curtain and how the show is developing.
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
  • Behind-the-scenes
Estimated Shipping
March 2020
46 claimed

INTRUDER POSTER

Currency Conversion $31 USD
£25 GBP
I'd email you INTRUDER poster created by Cindy Derby.
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
  • Behind-the-scenes
  • Intruder poster
Estimated Shipping
March 2020
10 claimed

INTRUDER POSTCARD

Currency Conversion $50 USD
£40 GBP
Personalised INTRUDER postcard sent to your home address.
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
  • Behind-the-scenes
  • Intruder poster
  • Intruder postcard
Estimated Shipping
April 2020
12 claimed

1 TICKET TO SEE INTRUDER

Currency Conversion $88 USD
£70 GBP
1 free ticket to see INTRUDER.
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
  • Behind-the-scenes
  • Intruder poster
  • Intruder postcard
  • 1 ticket to see Intruder
Estimated Shipping
April 2020
10 claimed

INTRUDER SCRIPT

Currency Conversion $126 USD
£100 GBP
INTRUDER script will be emailed to you.
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
  • Behind-the-scenes
  • Intruder poster
  • Intruder postcard
  • 1 ticket to see Intruder
  • Intruder script
Estimated Shipping
April 2020
12 claimed

MEETING REMI

Currency Conversion $189 USD
£150 GBP
Meeting Remi in London.
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
  • Behind-the-scenes
  • Intruder poster
  • Intruder postcard
  • 1 ticket to see Intruder
  • Intruder script
  • Meeting Remi
Estimated Shipping
April 2020
6 claimed

CREATIVE CONSULTATION

Currency Conversion $378 USD
£300 GBP
Remi will give you up to 3 hours of FEEDBACK on your script, film, reel, monologue - you name it! Available over Skype/Zoom.
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
  • Behind-the-scenes
  • Intruder poster
  • Intruder postcard
  • 1 ticket to see Intruder
  • Intruder script
  • Meeting Remi
  • Creative consultation
Estimated Shipping
May 2020
0 claimed

SPONSOR CREDIT

Currency Conversion $629 USD
£500 GBP
You will be credited as a sponsor of INTRUDER in the programme.
Included Items
  • Social media shout-out
  • Behind-the-scenes
  • Intruder poster
  • Intruder postcard
  • 1 ticket to see Intruder
  • Intruder script
  • Meeting Remi
  • Creative consultation
  • Sponsor Credit
Estimated Shipping
March 2020
1 claimed
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