Images
Photographs & artwork
Click any image to open it full size, then save it. Free to use with credit to Paul Tosh.
For Press
Everything here is free to use. Photographs, video and text may be reproduced with credit to Paul Tosh and a link to tosh42.com. For anything else — an interview, a live excerpt for broadcast, a higher-resolution file — write to bookings@tosh42.com.
Paper Gun is an entirely original operetta — music, lyrics and text by Paul Tosh — with a few long-out-of-copyright touchstones along the way.
The Release
Touring, performing his own composition.
A ready-to-edit release for the current tour, with the venue, date and time left blank for your listing. Supplied as a Word file so you can lift what you need.
In His Own Words
Free to quote in full or in part. Written by Paul Tosh, October 2026. The realization it describes came at Purim, 3 March 2026.
“I had been enjoying the development of my performance work very much, and it was getting tremendously heartfelt feedback (there are live testimonial videos at tosh42.com). 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.”
“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.”
Biographies
Paul Tosh is a Scottish-born singer, pianist and looping artist based in Manheim, Pennsylvania, touring and performing his own composition. He performs Paper Gun, an original one-man operetta, and The Song Is The Play, in which iconic songs are performed as theatre. He tours the United States and Canada in a self-contained performance camper.
Paul Tosh is a singer, pianist and looping artist based in Manheim, Pennsylvania. Born in Scotland to two opera enthusiasts and trained by the classical voice coach Lide DeRosa in Glasgow, he learned his trade in piano bars across Europe before settling in the United States. For two decades he has performed in senior residences, churches and theatres in Britain, the United States and Canada. Out of those rooms came Paper Gun, a three-act operetta for one performer and a piano, about resentment and what to do with it. He also performs The Song Is The Play, treating iconic songs as theatre with live piano looping.
Paul Tosh is a singer, pianist and looping artist based in Manheim, Pennsylvania, where he also works as a supervisor on a farm. Born in Scotland, the son of two opera enthusiasts, he trained with the classical voice coach Lide DeRosa in Glasgow and learned his trade in piano bars across Europe before settling in the United States.
For roughly two decades he has performed in senior residences, churches, community centres and theatres across four countries — the last ten years in the United States and Canada — several thousand performances, and several thousand conversations afterwards. Among the residents he has sung to: a backing singer for Ray Charles, a pilot who flew for Mariah Carey, a chef who cooked for Bill Gates, and a man who worked security for Bill Clinton.
Out of those rooms came Paper Gun, an original operetta in three acts for one performer and a piano, in which a single character is sung by two voices — the man, and the voice in his head that keeps the argument going. It is about resentment and what to do with it, and it is used by presenters as a shared therapeutic experience as much as a concert. He also performs The Song Is The Play, in which songs by Dylan, Sinatra, the Beatles and others are acted out as theatre with live piano looping. He tours in a Cybertruck fitted with a custom camper and wrapped in lyrics from his own songs.
The Talkback
The performance is followed by a spoken frame of ten to fifteen minutes, the same every time. It is not a Q&A about the show. The show takes you from resentment to grief. What to do next is also important. It sets out what the piece argues: that being sad rather than angry is a starting point rather than an end; that building anything has two precursors — being believable to yourself and not blaming — and that neither can be attained without satisfaction first, which comes from learning something for its own sake. The show does the feeling. The talkback gives people somewhere to put it.
The transcript is published before anyone books — the close is not a surprise to a presenter or to a clinician, which is unusual and deliberate. In therapeutic and clinical settings it is co-held with a clinical partner and runs twenty to thirty minutes. The talkback in full, word for word → · The care frame →
Quotable
“Last night made me feel like the pre-WWII era of the arts in society. Loved it.”
Libby Fox · Director, Swamp Fox Dock & Marine
Host of the first performance of the operetta, at the home concert they put on in Charleston.
“I like your message: be kind to yourself.”
Edie · Brightview, Columbia
Overheard on the microphone, after a concert of excerpts from the operetta.
“I think I’ve listened to that song a hundred times — but that might be the first time I’ve actually heard it.”
Audience member
“I especially like the substantive intellectual meaning that you weave into your music.”
Rabbi Daniel Lapin
A Point of Interest
Paper Gun is an entirely original work — music, lyrics and text by Paul Tosh. Five pieces from opera and the Neapolitan songbook are touched along the way, three of them carrying new words. All five are long out of copyright, which is why nothing in the show requires a licence.
With a lyric adaptation
As they are
The Facts
Show — Paper Gun, an original operetta in three acts — a triple header
Authorship — words and music by Paul Tosh, written at a piano; not AI-generated. Documented from early drafts onward in recordings going back decades.
Performers — one; sometimes with a soloist / narrator
Running time — just under two hours of performance; three acts of about thirty-five minutes, with two intervals of ten to fifteen minutes, plus a ten-minute talkback. About two and a half hours in the room.
Instrument — piano, with live looping
Second show — The Song Is The Play, iconic songs as theatre
Audiences — venues, 55+ communities, theatres, houses of worship, fundraisers
Territory — United States and Canada; self-contained performance camper
Tickets — the first run is free; thereafter $35 general admission, $60 patron seat, limited to 12
Audience participation — none; nobody is singled out or asked to disclose anything
Recording — performances are filmed; a notice is displayed at the entrance
Online — tosh42.com · @toshfortwo
Images
Click any image to open it full size, then save it. Free to use with credit to Paul Tosh.
Video
Animated Poster
A ten-second animated version of the tour poster, free to use. Right-click or long-press to save the file.
The Open Secret
Twenty seconds of the CyberPhoenix, wrapped, with the Paper Gun side in shot. Free to use with credit to Paul Tosh. Right-click or long-press to save the file.
Interviews
Paul Tosh will perform a short excerpt for broadcast or filming, and is happy to talk about the show, the twenty years of rooms behind it, or the truck. Write to bookings@tosh42.com.
Words & music by Paul Tosh · Written at a piano · Not AI-generated