Developed through R&D at Camden People's Theatre, The Monument is a one-woman comedy show with audience participation, where I use rap and poetry to embody Bogdan - a fictional Polish builder, working on a mysterious construction project. Bogdan is a relatable everyman, hard worker, focused on earning money and imagining the future it will afford him. He's also seeking love and life purpose, which make him question the status quo. The show explores different perspectives on masculinity, cultural stereotypes, but also impact of technology on our experience of reality and history. In a way, it also a humorous imagining the end of capitalism. The inspiration for the piece came from a story of the biggest monument of Stalin in the 1950s Prague (Czechoslovakia), which made me reflect on the impact of ideologies on the lives of individuals and society, as well as lean into the consequences of my own upbringing in a former communist country. Also, through Covid we watched the whole world grind to a halt, while the construction industry carried on. I often imagined who are the people keeping it going, so I interviewed a number of East European builders whose perspectives I'm partly reflecting in the piece. Dramaturg and producer Pamela Farrugia