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MASSACHUSETTS ON THE MORNING OF MARCH 6,1770, Boston was in crisis. The night before, British soldiers had fired their guns into a violent crowd, leaving four dead and seven wounded. This event was soon labeled the Boston Massacre, a milestone on the path to the American Revolution.
Bostonians demanded that acting royal governor Thomas Hutchinson remove all soldiers from town. Would that action keep the peace or reward mob violence? Did Hutchinson even have the authority to alter orders from London? Any choice would be fraught with consequences. This spring, modern crowds in Boston watched the discussion unfold again in a new play supported by Mass Humanities called Blood on the Snow, staged inside the same walls where the governor and his advisers debated those questions in 1770.
Blood on the Snow is an experiment in combining public history and theater. It is produced by the Bostonian Society, the nonprofit organization that maintains the Old State House, the brick building erected near the center of Boston in 1713 to house the town and provincial governments. The building is a major stop on the city's Freedom Trail but, like all history museums, seeks new ways to engage...