About Compositor E
It is 1623, and 17-year old John has come to London to work as an apprentice typesetter, under the mentorship of Isaac Jaggard. But with a potentially game-changing new commission on his hands, Isaac doesn’t have much time to help John find his feet. And while he’s desperate to develop his craft, it’s becoming apparent that John is suffering from some kind of trauma. Having persuaded Isaac to let him progress to setting from a confusing manuscript of ‘Macbeth’, John’s trauma begins to spill out onto the print shop floor. Why were those men so scared of his mother? And why are these children scurrying around with sheets of drying ink called… ‘devils’? A play about the hidden fingerprints of history – produced in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio – that asks how much we have really changed since the 17th Century. Age Recommendation: 12+