Before the first shots of the American Revolution were fired, the battle for independence was already being staged—sometimes quite literally.

This conversation examines how theatricality, aesthetics, and performance helped ignite a revolutionary spirit in Colonial Boston, with a special focus on Dr. Joseph Warren: physician, patriot, and master of political drama. From his famed 1775 oration at Old South Meeting House—delivered in a Roman toga, entered through the windows to evade British officers—to the influence of the era’s most popular political drama, Cato, Warren and his contemporaries understood the power of spectacle to inspire courage and unity.

Panelists will explore how Warren and other charismatic leaders—such as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and Mercy Otis Warren—wielded performance as a tool for persuasion, turning speeches into scenes, public gatherings into theaters of resistance, and political ideals into vivid, emotional experiences. Through this lens, the American Revolution becomes not only a military and political struggle, but also a cultural and performative movement