Building the Common Press for Broadside

One of the most exciting parts of developing Broadside the Musical has been designing and building the common press that anchors the show visually and thematically. In Revolutionary Boston, the printing press was more than a machine, it was a weapon of ideas. For the stage, though, it also has to survive rehearsals, scene shifts, lighting cues, actor movement, and the occasional last-minute adjustment. Building something that looks period-accurate while remaining practical for live theatre becomes its own kind of balancing act.

Colonial press structure for music theatre show

There are a lot of steps in the process, and honestly, some of it comes down to throwing a few ideas against the wall just to better understand what works. Early prototypes are rarely elegant, but they help reveal the safest and simplest path toward something functional and easy to implement. In technical theatre, every extra hinge, hidden wheel, or moving part becomes another possible point of failure, especially under performance conditions. I’ve learned it’s better to discover those weaknesses early in the shop than during a scene change in front of an audience.

Common press mechanism for the musical "Broadside"

One interesting discovery during the build was realizing the common press might be able to double as a witness stand within the staging. Once that idea appeared, it started influencing the overall design language of the piece. Instead of building two separate scenic elements, the challenge became creating one structure capable of serving multiple storytelling purposes without feeling forced. That’s often where technical theatre becomes most creative: not simply constructing scenery, but designing objects that actively participate in the storytelling.

What I love about this stage of development is how collaborative and experimental it feels. A common press in a museum can simply exist as a historical object, but a common press in theatre has to live, move, transform, and support performers safely night after night. Every rehearsal teaches something new about weight, sightlines, actor traffic, or audience perception. Little by little, the rough sketches turn into something real, and somewhere in the sawdust and problem-solving, the world of Broadside starts coming to life.

Before the curtain falls… a spark. 💥

Broadside the Musical doesn’t end with a polite bow, it ends with the shot heard ’round the world. On this date, 251 years ago, Dr. Joseph Warren quietly set history in motion. A physician by trade, but a revolutionary at heart, he had intelligence that British troops were marching to seize colonial supplies and arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

Minute Man Park Overview

So he turned to a silversmith. Paul Revere didn’t just “ride at midnight”, he first had to slip out of Boston by rowboat, quietly crossing the Charles River past a British warship. Once ashore, he borrowed a horse and began the ride most of us only half remember. (And here’s the twist: he wasn’t alone, other riders like William Dawes and Samuel Prescott carried the alarm too.) Behind him, in the North End, lanterns were raised in the tower of Old North Church, one if by land, two if by sea, a signal system as fast and urgent as any 18th-century “notification feed.”

The Midnight Riders

Ink had done its work. The broadsides had stirred the people. Now… the message was moving and gaining momentum. By the next morning, April 19, 1775, on the green at Lexington, about 70 militia stood facing hundreds of British regulars. No orders clearly given. No plan to begin a war. And the, a shot rang out. No one knows who fired it. A British officer later called it “a random shot.” Ralph Waldo Emerson would later immortalize it as “the shot heard ’round the world.” Eight colonists lay dead. The war had begun.

Witness on the Battle Road

That’s where we leave you:

Right at the moment when words give way to history, when broadsides become bullets, and a story becomes a revolution.

Not Quite Broadway, But We’ve Got Barrels

Most years, we don’t really build a set. We get the cast in front of an audience, tell the story, sing the songs, and trust that a little imagination will do the rest. A table, a chair, maybe a suggestion of time and place and off we go. It’s scrappy, it’s fast, and honestly, it’s kind of our thing. We put it in front of an audience early, so the actors can feel where the laughs land, where the room leans in, and where the story still needs to breathe. But somewhere along the way this year, it started to feel like maybe the world of the show wanted a little more to stand on.

Broadside staging for Vintage Theatre in Denver

Part of that shift came from having a longer run at Vintage Theatre, which gave us the rare gift of time to actually settle into the space. And part of it came from the moment we’re in the 250th birthday of the United States creeping closer, and a story about ink, ideas, and argument suddenly feeling very present again. It didn’t feel like a year to just suggest the world. It felt like a year to build it; carefully, simply, and with a bit of purpose behind every piece.

Typical common press for 1770

Now, before anyone imagines chandeliers flying in from the rafters, let’s be clear, we’re still working without a massive budget for costumes or scenery. What we do have is a plan. The set comes together in three parts: stage left, the print shop, Edes & Gill with a wooden replica of a common press (yes, the devil’s tail is there), a work table, and a flat layered with broadsides that look like they’ve been mid-argument since 1770. Center stage, a single building that does a little of everything, a government space that, with a shift in light, becomes the Green Dragon Tavern. And stage right, Griffin’s Wharf: a small dock, three sturdy barrels (the stars of the show, really), and a thick tug rope, just enough to suggest the harbor without committing to the Atlantic.

Broadside staging for Vintage Theatre in Denver

At the center of it all sits a long table with a few stools, which might be the most important piece we’ve got. Because no matter how big the ideas get, they tend to start the same way: with people sitting down, talking things through, and deciding what happens next. That’s what this set is here to do. Not overwhelm, not distract, just hold the story. Give it shape. Give it somewhere to live. And for us, it feels like a small but meaningful step forward, same spirit as always, just with a little more wood, a few more nails… and yes, a few very important barrels.

Meet the cast of Broadside the Musical

Meet the cast of Broadside the Musical

Playing at Vintage Theatre

July 3,4,5,17,18,19, TBD
Tickets at VintageTheatre.org
Box Office (303) 856-7830

ADAM JOHNSON - Joseph Warren
ANTIGONE BIDDLE - Mercy Otis Warren
COOPER KAMINSKY - General Thomas Gage
GUNNAR BETTIS - Paul Revere
HEATHER WESTENSKOW - Abigail Adams
JACOB FRYE - Robert Paine
KELLY MCALLISTER - John Adams
LIBBY SHULL - Sarah Revere
MADELYNN GUERRA - Sarah Bradlee Fulton
OLIVIA KISICKI - Margaret Gage
PATRICK BROWNSON - Governor Thomas Hutchinson
SONSHARAE TULL - Philiss Wheatley
TANNER KELLY - Sam Adams

Broadside poster meets Colorado sunset at Vintage Theatre

Margaret Gage Pulls the Devil’s Tail

Margaret Gage doesn’t exactly belong in the Edes & Gill print shop, which is precisely why her arrival is so delicious. In this scene from Broadside, the wife of General Thomas Gage steps unexpectedly into Boston’s most ink-stained corner, where Paul Revere and the printers are busy shaping the arguments of a restless city. She’s polished, thoughtful, and dressed with unmistakable taste; he’s practical, outspoken, and covered in the honest grime of the trade. Put them in one room with a printing press between them, and suddenly politics gets very personal.

Margaret Gage visits Edes & Gill

What makes the moment so fun is that Margaret isn’t there to scold, threaten, or spy. She comes with an idea. She wants to know whether words, images, and a well-placed broadside might help calm a city that seems determined to split itself in two. For Margaret, this scene deepens her arc in a meaningful way: she is trying, sincerely, to support her husband’s success in Boston, not through force, but through influence, tact, and persuasion. She still believes there may be a way to shape public feeling before anger hardens into something irreversible.

Margaret Gage makes a proposition

Of course, this is Edes & Gill, so nothing stays polite for long. The press itself becomes part of the flirtation and the fun, especially when Margaret launches into a lively number built around printing language, persuasion, and the famous “Devil’s Tail,” the long bar that brings the press together. It’s witty, rhythmic, and a little dangerous; in other words, exactly the kind of theatrical trouble we like. Margaret tries to sell the power of messaging; Paul, naturally, pushes back with the steady conviction of a man who prints what he believes. Ink flies, sparks fly, and nobody in the shop is looking away.

Margaret Gage pulls the Devil's Tale

And then, just when the tension has tightened to the breaking point, the scene swerves into charm. Paul reaches for a mandolin, Margaret’s carefully ordered composure starts to soften, and what began as a political visit turns into something warmer, stranger, and much harder to define. That’s the pleasure of this sequence: it isn’t just about broadsides, slogans, or sides being chosen. It’s about attraction, ideology, performance, and the thrilling possibility that sometimes the most dangerous thing in a revolution is not a musket or a mob, but a well-timed song in a room full of ink.

Building a Broadside Costume, One Detail at a Time

There are few things I love more than tumbling headfirst into a costume project, and this one started about four months ago when I began working with the wonderful Kathy Page. I had found the pattern on eBay, a Butterick historical costume pattern from their “Making History” line and I was immediately obsessed. It wasn’t just vaguely colonial-ish. It was the full fantasy: coat, vest, shirt, breeches, hat. The kind of pattern that says, with complete confidence, “Yes, we are doing this properly,” which is exactly my kind of drama.

Butterick Pattern 3072

Once Kathy and I got started, the real fun began. She pulled together fabric swatches, and we spent time choosing materials and colors that felt right for the period but also theatrical in the best possible way. That part always feels a bit magical to me, when a flat pattern starts becoming an actual person. We thought about texture, weight, and how the colors would play together, building the look piece by piece until it started to feel less like sewing and more like time travel with opinions.

Fugawee Pewter Buttons

And then came the buttons, which of course deserve their own paragraph because buttons like these are not merely functional, they are a commitment. I ordered them from Fugawee, and they are glorious pewter buttons in multiple sizes, dozens of them, each one with that wonderfully weighty little historical presence. The smooth domed front, the loop shank on the back, the slightly imperfect hand-cast character — honestly, they are tiny metal divas. Once those arrived, the whole project suddenly felt deliciously real. Nothing says “I take costuming far too seriously” quite like gleefully sorting pewter buttons by size.

Colonial American fifer costume reproduction

What I love most about costuming is how it turns research into something tactile and joyful. You’re not just imagining a character or a time period; you’re choosing the fabric, fussing over trims, admiring the buttons, and watching the whole thing come alive detail by detail. Working with Kathy has been such a treat because she understands that the magic lives in those choices. And when it all starts coming together, it doesn’t just look historical, it feels like you’re getting dressed in 1770 in the Colonies, one glorious layer at a time.

Before the Feed, There Was Ink: Why We’re Backing Letterpress Depot

Before there were feeds, there were broadsides. Ink-on-paper “posts” loud enough to spark a revolution. That’s why we’re thrilled to name Letterpress Depot as our designated charity this year. They’re building a living museum of letterpress printing, typography, design, poetry, and book arts, making hands-on access possible for the whole community while preserving and rehabbing the historic Englewood Depot building.

Historic Englewood Depot on Track to Become Letterpress Museum

And here’s the part that makes our history nerd hearts sing: they’re printing our posters as actual broadsides, the same tactile, time-travel magic that carried arguments, satire, news, and courage through the 1700s. (If you’ve ever heard us talk about “Broadsides as the original social media”… this is that.)

Tom Parson of Letterpress Depot with a Broadside of Broadside

If you want to help keep the presses rolling:

• Donate to support construction and opening their doors to the community (they’re fundraising toward a build-out goal and taking gifts online + by mail).
• Become a member (discounts on workshops + helps keep community programming free/open). 
• Volunteer: they’re a volunteer-run organization and welcome help on everything from construction to press projects.

Ink is messy. Type is heavy. And the impact is real. All aboard. 🚉

https://www.letterpressdepot.org/

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION: Governor Hutchinson in the Streets

In our Broadside the Musical we have a scene where Boston doesn’t feel like a town anymore, it feels like a checkpoint. Governor Thomas Hutchinson moves through the winter streets with two soldiers at his shoulder, not to do the searching himself, but to be seen while it’s done. The message is simple: the Crown is watching, the Crown is present, and compliance is no longer a handshake between neighbors, it’s an inspection. That atmosphere is historically grounded in the late Townshend era, when Parliament’s import duties on tea and tighter enforcement turned everyday trade into a flashpoint.

Governor Hutchinson looking for smuggled tea near customs office

The searches themselves belong to the machinery of customs: searchers, writs, paperwork, forced “assistance.” Long before a musket ever fires, the violence is administrative; doors opened, chests unlatched, baskets upended, the public humiliation of being treated like a suspect in your own city. Writs of assistance functioned as broad search authority for customs enforcement, empowering officials to enter houses and shops in daytime and compel help, exactly the kind of legal blunt instrument that can make a street go quiet with rage.

Governor Hutchinson holds a tea bin with improper tariff papers

And then there are the soldiers. Boston’s tension didn’t come out of nowhere; troops had been landing and quartering in the town since 1768, in the wake of escalating disputes over customs enforcement and imperial authority. Our scene borrows that real pressure: uniforms at corners, drums in the distance, a crowd that learns to speak in half-sentences because someone is always close enough to overhear.

Colonist fight back against illegal search and seizure

So Hutchinson’s walk becomes theatrical without needing to be literal: he is the face of lawful power in a place that no longer trusts law. He doesn’t have to shout. He only has to pass by while other men search, and the city supplies the rest; stares, mutters, pamphlets posted fresh on walls, the sense that Boston is one spark away from becoming a story nobody can control.

Before the Bayonets, There Were Ballrooms: Margaret Gage Before the Intolerables

In the mid 1760s, the Gages weren’t “Boston people” yet, they were New York people. After Thomas Gage’s promotion, he and Margaret Kemble Gage set up house on Broad Street in New York City, where Margaret moved like a polished Loyalist hostess and their home became a hub of imperial society. New York was the command center: dinners, alliances, manners, an empire that still believed it could be charming.

The Gage's home in New York became a hub of imperial society.

But Boston kept dragging the story north. In 1768, Gage backed the decision to occupy Boston with regular troops, a show of force that only sharpened the city’s fury and by 1770 the pressure cooker blows with the Boston Massacre. Even when he’s physically based in New York, he’s managing Boston’s crisis, insisting the “unhappy affair” be handled with full documentation and control, because he knows the street isn’t just angry; it’s watching.

The Gage family visits the family estate in Sussex

In June 1773, the family finally sails for England, less a triumphant homecoming than a strategic exhale. Sussex is the old-rooted world: the Gage family’s seat and countryside stability, the place where “home” is supposed to mean walls that don’t argue back. And yet the Atlantic won’t stay quiet, news arrives that Massachusetts is inflamed again, now with politics turning personal.

Thomas Gage replaces Governor Hutchinson and enforces the Intolerables Act

Then comes the pivot: the Hutchinson letters hit Boston in mid-1773 and explode into outrage, and the crisis accelerates into Parliament’s punitive response after the Tea Party. In spring 1774 Hutchinson is out, and Gage is sent in, a soldier and administrator deemed steady enough to enforce the new order. He arrives in Boston 13 May 1774 and starts implementing the Coercive (“Intolerable”) Acts: not persuasion now, but policy backed by bayonets. New York society and Sussex calm are gone; Boston is the assignment that becomes a siege.

A Made-for-TMZ Moment: Hutchinson’s Letters

As the harmony in Broadside thickens, Governor Hutchinson storms into General Gage’s office with a damp issue of the Boston Gazette in his hand. He doesn’t bother with greetings. “They printed my letters.” Gage barely looks up. “I’ve seen it.” He’s already clocked the damage and he’s already thinking beyond Boston, because the scandal has been messy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Governor Hutchinson showing displeasure on his published personal letters

In London, the blame and gossip even produced a clumsy sword duel between gentlemen arguing over who was responsible, the kind of spectacle that would be funny if it weren’t tied to real power. Hutchinson calls it private correspondence turned into public punishment, his words “set in type like a public hanging.” Gage agrees it’s theft, but he keeps his response controlled. The letters weren’t pulled from a Boston drawer; they were obtained in London, and forwarded to Massachusetts. Now Boston has done what Boston does best: printed them and dared everyone to react.

London's famous duel when the bark was bigger than bite

Hutchinson wants force. “Then we crush the press. Edes and Gill, tonight.” Gage stops him with a simple consequence: soldiers at a print shop becomes the next headline. Hutchinson doesn’t care. He wants the source. He wants a name he can drag into daylight and blame for the whole thing. And when he says it's tied to “Revere” you can feel the scene tighten. Revere is visible. Revere has friends. Revere makes noise. Hutchinson wants to treat that as proof.

General Gage consoles Governor Hutchinson on his personal letters

Gage won’t give him a public show. He grants permission to question Paul Revere, but only with conditions: no public arrest, no roughing him up, questions only. Hutchinson agrees because he wants action more than he wants restraint. Gage ends the exchange with the line that explains the whole strategy: they’re after information, not a martyr. In Boston, the wrong kind of crackdown doesn’t end a scandal, it gives it a face.