History Finds Its Voice in Broadside

Review: Broadside the Musical

One of the most compelling aspects of Broadside is its confidence as a piece of theatrical storytelling. Rather than simply recounting the familiar milestones of the American Revolution, the musical chooses an unexpected guide: Phillis Wheatley. It is a fascinating dramatic choice, giving narrative authority to a woman whose voice was so often questioned during her own lifetime. By allowing Wheatley to frame the story, the production quietly reminds us that history is not only shaped by those in power, but also by those whose words endured despite every obstacle. Shonsharae Tull brings grace, intelligence, and quiet strength to the role. Her portrayal grounds the production, providing a thoughtful perspective that ties together the political upheaval with the deeply human stories unfolding around it. Rather than dominating the stage, she elevates it, making Phillis Wheatley an essential presence throughout the evening.

Sonsharae Tull as Phillis Wheatley

Patrick Brownson delivers a memorable portrayal of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, capturing both the dignity and frustration of a man watching the world shift beneath him. Equally compelling is the nuanced relationship between Margaret and Thomas Gage, whose marriage provides the emotional heart of the production. Their divided loyalties offer a deeply personal perspective on a conflict too often reduced to politics. Meanwhile, the fiery Dr. Joseph Warren and Paul Revere lead the Sons of Liberty with conviction and urgency, balancing idealism with revolutionary zeal.

Patrick Brownson as Governor Thomas Hutchinson

The production is equally successful in its visual world. The period costumes create a convincing eighteenth-century Boston without ever feeling museum-like, while an elegantly simple set makes effective use of colonial barrels, hand-printed broadsides, and even a beautifully incorporated clavichord to establish both time and place. Rather than relying on spectacle, the production favors carefully chosen period details that enrich the storytelling, allowing the characters to inhabit history while keeping the narrative immediate, authentic, and accessible.

Tanner Kelly as Sam Adams with his pseudonyms

Perhaps the evening's most delightful sequence is the play-within-a-play, where the production embraces its theatricality with wit and charm. It pairs beautifully with the Daughters of Liberty, whose spinning circle becomes both a place of resistance and sisterhood as they quietly weave their way through the Revolution. It's a clever reminder that history is often moved forward not only by speeches and battles, but by ordinary people finding extraordinary ways to act.

Gunnar Bettis as Paul Revere acting as the Governor

Like many new musicals, Broadside is not yet a finished work. There are moments where pacing, transitions, and dramatic focus could be sharpened, and a handful of scenes would benefit from further refinement. Yet those are the kinds of challenges that arise from execution rather than conception. The underlying architecture of the piece is remarkably strong, suggesting a work with the potential to grow into something genuinely significant.

Kelly McAllister plays John Adams with passion

At its heart, Broadside is less about celebrating the past than examining the ideals that emerged from it. Liberty, equality, and freedom are presented not as settled achievements, but as aspirations that every generation is challenged to redefine and defend. By the final curtain, the audience is left contemplating the enduring American experiment, not as a completed story, but as one still being written. If Broadside continues to evolve with the same imagination that inspired its foundation, it has every opportunity to become an important new work of American musical theatre.

The cast on set at Vintage Theatre

Verdict: Broadside may still have refinements ahead of it, but its imagination, emotional intelligence, and inventive approach to history make it one of the more promising new musicals to emerge in recent years. It's a production with a solid artistic foundation and the potential to grow into a lasting work of musical theatre.

Recommendation: A must-see for lovers of new musicals, American history, and thoughtful theatre. Whether you're drawn by the Revolutionary story, the soaring period-inspired score, or simply the chance to experience an original work finding its voice, Broadside is well worth your time.

Before Feeds and Timelines, There Were Broadsides

At Viewmark, we’ve always had a soft spot for that kind of communication. Not because it’s nostalgic, but because it’s direct. Human. Made to be seen in real life, passed hand to hand, read out loud, argued over, laughed at, remembered. That’s why we’re proud to support this year’s production of Broadside the Musical as we head toward our country’s 250th. And it’s also why this partnership means more to us than a single season or a single show.

Broadside the Musical

The best collaborations don’t start big

When people talk about “supporting the arts,” it can sound like a one-time gesture: a check, a logo on a poster, a quick round of applause. But the truth is, the most meaningful work, onstage and off, doesn’t happen in one dramatic moment. It happens through continuity. Through showing up. Through relationships that have time to deepen. Over the years, Viewmark has been lucky enough to work alongside a small, fiercely committed group of creatives, artists who keep building, year after year, in Denver and abroad. They’ve never treated theatre like a disposable product. They treat it like a living practice: something you return to, refine, and offer back to your community with intention. That kind of long-running collaboration is rare in any field. In the performing arts, where everything is temporary by design, it’s especially rare. And we don’t take it for granted.

Tom Parson of Letterpress Depot with a Broadside of Broadside

Why “Broadside” feels like the right story right now

There’s something poetic about supporting a show called Broadside in the lead-up to the 250th. Broadsides were the original “share” button; bold, public, and unapologetically physical. They weren’t optimized for clicks. They were optimized for impact. They carried news, satire, argument, and urgency through streets and taverns and meeting houses. They didn’t disappear after 24 hours. And that’s the point. The messages that matter still move fastest when they’re bold and a little ink-stained. In a moment when so much of public life happens on screens; fast, fragmented, forgettable. Broadside the Musical insists on the power of live gathering and the stubborn, beautiful slowness of making something real together. No algorithm. No scroll. Just voices, bodies, story, and the electricity of a room full of people paying attention at the same time.

What we’ve learned from working with artists

Working with this creative team has reminded us, again and again, of a few simple truths:

• A small group can have an outsized impact. The scale isn’t the point. The clarity of purpose is.
• Craft matters. Audiences feel the difference when something is built with care.
• Community is the real infrastructure. Sets get struck. Posters come down. But relationships are what keep the work alive long enough to matter.

That’s one reason we’re proud to stand behind this production: not because it’s easy, but because it’s earned. Because it’s built on the kind of sustained effort that doesn’t always make headlines, but makes culture.

Viewmark endorses theater troupe, receives 4 stars in Edinburgh Scotland

Call it "luck" that a Viewmark supported theatre troupe led by Colorado director Kelly McAllister, was given the opportunity to open this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world’s largest performing arts festival and one of the greatest celebrations of arts and culture on the planet. Each year, Greenside Venues randomly selects just twenty shows to open the festival. The event invites professional theatre guests and media from around to world to preview the works of several performing arts organizations who have traveled to Scotland to participate in the festival.

BANNED cast backstage at Riddles Court

It was the second year in a row for this troupe to be invited to perform in Edinburgh and expectations were high. Viewmark, who now focuses on the performing arts community, identified the show as a candidate for their new strategy. After all, last year the group’s show received five-stars and became a local sensation for its stage portrayal of the community buyout of the small Isle of Eigg in the Scottish Hebrides. Then, the show went on to be selected by Broadway World readers as the Best New Musical of 2023; naturally, Viewmark was delighted when the troupe agreed to return in 2024 and accepted the endorsement.

BANNED cast opens Edinburgh Fringe

Early on, the troupe discussed how the new show needs to be different than “Eigg.” and the members decided to reinvent “WYSIWYG,” an April Alsup musical about the sensitive issues of online dating, gender and sexuality. The new musical has now become known as just “BANNED,” since it follows a group of gender misfits through the events leading up to their debut at a local performing arts festival. There were all sorts of clever marketing tactics deployed that followed the clandestine theatre troupe to the festival.

BANNED cast attending "Tattoo" at Edinburgh Castle

After opening night it was clear that the theatre troupe had another hit on their hands. The Scotsman, Scotland’s National Newspaper, gave the show four stars and praised the composer April Alsup. “The songs are strong and memorable, in nicely complex arrangements too – tunes are swapped back and forth in complicated ensemble numbers, and the cast offers glowing harmonies as well as vivid solos.” It also hailed the actors, the choreography and declared that “Online dating gets a merciless take-down, while the pleasures of sex are dutifully celebrated.”

BANNED cast celebrates opening night at Posto Pizza

“Best of all, however, BANNED offers a deeply human perspective on issues of gender and sexual identity, its flawed characters navigating their own mistake-filled routes through pronouns, preferences and plenty more,” the review continued. “It’s a complex, compassionate show of missteps and misunderstandings, and one that warmly applies the tolerance it requests of others onto its own damaged but likeable characters.”

BANNED cast heads home from University of Edinburgh

Theatrical success doesn’t come about in a vacuum; it really does take a village to mount a new musical production and Denver has a vast array of organizations that support the performing arts. From rehearsal spaces to performance venues, from theatre professionals to theatre goers, this community is the perfect place to incubate a meaningful, relevant and important show for international stages.

For more information on “BANNED the Musical” or to watch a video of the Edinburgh performance run, visit www.banned.show.

Viewmark sponsors Denver's Performing Arts Project

Viewmark announced today that it has inked an agreement to support Denver's Performing Arts Project with knowledge, technical expertise and financial support. The plan provides a roadmap for upcoming Colorado productions and/or touring shows to use Viewmark resources. We are confident that our commitment to Colorado and the Performing Arts Project will make Denver a better place to live.

Viewmark staff near Fairplay Colorado

Viewmark changes course and future direction as principals retire.

It's been over 30 years since I founded Viewmark. We were one of the first web design firms in the country and were on the ground floor of an exciting new industry. It's hard to imagine a time when you could visit all the new websites of the month, I remember Bill Gates saying the web was just a passing fad. One year, Viewmark won gold, silver and bronze for web design at the Colorado BMA gold key awards. We built the eCommerce system for Baby Einstein (now Disney), the ticketing engine for Central City Opera and the CMS for so many more.

Right before the millennium, we won "best education site" on the web with HP, we received an International EMMA award and I met Tim Berners-Lee at the MOMA awards ceremony in San Francisco. It really has been quite a ride and I really have enjoyed every minute of it. Life has lots of twists and turns and you never know when an opportunity like that will present itself; in any case, over the last year I've been able to wind the company down and position it more as an organization dedicated to supporting the performing arts in retirement. Here's to the next chapter, cheers and happy new years to come!

Celebrating 20 years of Pubcon!

This year we're celebrating 20 years of Pubcon. It seems like it was just yesterday we were in London. Now 20 years later, we're all gathered to talk about search engine marketing and optimization in Las Vegas for a simple one day affair at a downtown Pub on Fremont street. Congrats all!

Joe Laratro, Brett Tabke, Dana Todd, Glenn Alsup (Pubcon Keynote) 2006

Glenn Alsup Pubcon Super Session 2006

Performing Arts Awareness Case Study

Jeremy Bullmore once said "Brands are created like birds create nests". 

OBJECTIVE: Provide support for the creative efforts of our employees through the Performing Arts Project.

BACKGROUND: Viewmark is primarily a web design firm, but there always seems to be someone involved in some sort of extracurricular performing arts project around Denver. We believe that by helping our employees get visibility for their creative endeavors, we help them, our company, and the Denver community.

CHALLENGE: Create an effective online brand awareness playbook for the Performing Arts Project with an emphasis on providing the Denver community and our employees with a promotional avenue for their works.

SOLUTION: The PAP Internet Implementation Strategy for Performing Arts Professionals. A blueprint that utilizes Viewmark's expertise and fundamental principles of marketing, methods & measurement. It includes guidelines for websites and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, Spotify and SoundCloud, as well as powerful procedures and analytics for participants to get the most out of the World Wide Web.

RESULTS:: Over the the last few years, the Performing Arts Project has seen an increase in visitor traffic to their website by several orders of magnitude. At the same time, Viewmark employees have a conduit for their creative passions and a strong sense of company loyalty.