Creating a piece of work in response to the research being done by the Small Performances team has been such a fun challenge! We have had the opportunity to visit the labs, libraries, and archives where their research is taking place and learn firsthand the brilliant discoveries they have been making.

Working with this multidisciplinary group of typographers, historians, archaeologists, and craftspeople has not only been incredibly exciting, but it has also developed the way in which we create work. The research Small Performances are doing on the punches has given us wonderful language and metaphors that we wouldn’t have otherwise found when creating a show on who John Baskerville really was. An example of this is how the Small Performances team spoke about reducing the ‘noise’ around the punch, that is, clarifying what materials it was made of, the way it was made, and how it was used. We have used this exploration of the punch as a metaphor for John Baskerville himself, reducing the noise and myths around him and clarifying who he really was and the mark he wanted to make.

The multidisciplinary approach of the Small Performances team also echoes the collaborative way in which we create work. Much of our performance and surrounding activities has been inspired by the brilliant work we have done with students on the Digital Film Production course at Birmingham City University, Digital Media programmes at the University of Birmingham, and through workshops on John Baskerville’s will with young people in schools around Birmingham. Thanks to the National Literacy Trust Birmingham Hub for putting us in touch with these schools. It has been fantastic to find this collaborative synergy between our creative work and Small Performances’ research.

Theatre(ish)’s previous work has often explored local history, and we have loved that this project has given us the opportunity to learn more about the lives and work of John, and his equally impressive wife, Sarah! We hope that you have as much fun and learn as much watching the show as we have had making it. We hope that by exploring these figures of local history through performance, we can make this brilliant research more accessible to the public and learn more from each other as we explore how we, like Baskerville, want to make our own mark.