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Paul Tosh
Paper Gun
A new original operetta ·
One man · One piano
Flawed, live, inimitable.
Touring, performing his own composition
An intimate, original musical-theatre work about resentment,
identity and the struggle to let go.
First performance.
You are invited as my guest.
A show in three acts. Just under two hours of performance — about thirty-five minutes an act — with two intervals of ten to fifteen minutes and a ten-minute talkback. Complimentary tickets.
First Performance
Date to be announced
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Venue to be confirmed
Fifty free seats · Reserve now, I’ll write with the date
Live in the Making Clips
Are you in the greater Lancaster area?
Dates are being set now, venue by venue. Register in advance and I’ll write to you with the first ones — before they go anywhere else.
◆ Register in advanceAre you a presenter or a booker — and want to know what booking this involves?
◆ A free 15-minute consultOne man plays both sides of himself.
Filmed and recorded
By attending, you may appear in video, photographs or audio recordings.
A first run
There may be the odd pause along the way.
Talkback
Please stay for ten minutes afterwards, on two counts: the premise behind the show, and the show itself. Your reaction is the reason for the evening.
The Memo
Entirely optional: come dressed in black and white, any combination. A testimony against blurring.
Live in the Making — full songs
A Peek Behind It
A peek at the outfit — testing the hat and the shirt
A peek at rehearsals & the talkback
What Comes After
Every performance closes with the same ten-minute spoken frame — what to do with what the evening stirs up. It is the part presenters and therapists ask about first.
◆ Watch the full talkback explainedWhat the evening is about
Reserve a seat
Fifty seats, free, as my guest. The date is being set now — join the waiting list and I’ll write to you with it, and hold your place.
Or email bookings@tosh42.com
The evening is filmed and recorded · By attending you may appear in the footage
The Backdrops
In the running of the show, every scene change is marked by a change of backdrop board.
The booklet
Cover artwork
The Open Secret
The Midnight Note
14 October 2026
So it’s an extremely exciting time. It’s like 2:30 in the morning. I finished the farm night shift. I’m looking at the stars. I’m realizing how close I am to something that’s like a dream — to have such a project, such a collection of work, which you have to have tremendous energy to perform. But I know that it’s the right thing. I know that it touches people very, very deeply (see video below). I want to say that, because people are coming for a long concert — which people do when it’s, well, when it’s good enough.
I spent all my time on my own up at the farm doing the night shift, preparing the concert — these original works. And I realized that had I not been put at this distance, I would never have been able to do it.
What people say
What Led Up to It
March 2026
I had been enjoying the development of my performance work very much, and it was getting tremendously heartfelt feedback (see the live testimonial videos). But there is an inescapable fact: no matter how good you are as a performing artist, at this time and at this age, performing other people’s work — even performing your own now and then amongst it, and out of context — it isn’t going to happen for you. You have to have an entirely original piece.
And on Purim 2026 it suddenly struck me what the thread was through all the pieces.
Not realizing what the effort was going to be — to make it coherent, to pull every aspect of the presentation together, and then to sell it and get the first shows — I set about putting it together. And this is it.
What happens on stage
It isn’t a reading. It’s a fully performed show, in which I play three characters — the narrator, and the two voices of the man — and at times speak as myself. No costume, except for a hat — and sometimes a shirt split black and white. No props, but a series of poster boards that help to create location and mood. The rest is up to me: to make the characters vivid and real.
And it has social content that is very, very pertinent today, throughout the world — the whole question of resentment and blame, and all the psychology that sits under it.
How Act One Begins
An opera star takes his encore, and then walks home.
Host Introduction
“Tonight is something rare: an original operetta, written and performed by one man at a piano. It’s called Paper Gun, and it’s about the journey every one of us makes — from the resentments we carry to something we can finally call our own. It’s honest, and it’s handled with care from the first note to the last. He’s performed for two decades across four countries, and he wrote every word you’re about to hear. Please welcome the author and the voice of Paper Gun… Paul Tosh.”
If you are hosting — read it as written, or make your own.
This page is here while the first performance fills. Everything else about the shows, the songs and the truck is on the full site.