A bold, glittering musical inspired by one of the deadliest attacks on the LGBTQ+ community in history — The View Upstairs is a defiant celebration of queer joy, chosen family, and the fight to survive in the face of erasure.
MAY 29 - june 14, 2026
A bold, glittering musical inspired by one of the deadliest attacks on the LGBTQ+ community in history — The View Upstairs is a defiant celebration of queer joy, chosen family, and the fight to survive in the face of erasure.
MAY 29 - june 14, 2026
A look back at Iron Crow Theatre’s 2023 production of The Rocky Horror Show as featured on CBS News Baltimore.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILSON FREEMAN
The View Upstairs is a fiercely original, soul-stirring tribute to queer history, community, and resilience. With a lush, genre-blending (and sexy) score by Max Vernon, this boundary-pushing work transports audiences to 1973 New Orleans and into the Upstairs Lounge—a vibrant gay bar and haven for queer joy, chosen family, and radical self-expression. For those seated onstage in our newly created Lounge Seating, the line between past and present, audience and experience, dissolves. You’re not just watching the Lounge come alive; you’re inside it.
Inspired by the true story of the deadliest attack on the LGBTQ+ community in U.S. history prior to the Pulse Nightclub tragedy, The View Upstairs reclaims a moment many tried to erase. It invites us to gather both in celebration of and in solidarity with those we lost, and challenges us to confront what allowed the world to look away.
Presented as part of our Season of Survival, this production asks: as queer life evolves, are we truly better off as a community, or have we lost something along the way? Don’t miss this haunting, joyful, and defiant musical that reminds us survival means remembering, loving, and choosing each other again and again.
“There are bars where everybody knows your name, and bars where people invite you to a bathroom tryst. Such is the dive in Max Vernon’s…likable new musical, ”
— Elisabeth Vincentelli
“The real thrust, is how history—in particular, gay history—is passed from one generation to the next….combines club, funk, rock, spiritual and more to make the UpStairs lounge come alive.”
— Matthew Murray
“Vibrant! The View UpStairs is a moving homage to LGBT culture, past and present. The show swells with heart.”
— Isabella Biedenharn
WES
JOEY SCHUMAN
PATRICK
KOBE MORRISON
BUDDY
XANDER CONTE
HENRI
ASIA-LIGÉ ARNOLD+*
INEZ
SANTINA MAIOLATESI
FREDDY
CHRISTOPHER ALEXEY DIAZ*
DALE
GERADEN WARD
RICHARD
NICHOLAS MILES+
WILLIE
TIMOTH DAVID COPNEY+
REALTOR / COP
DAVID FORRER
+ denotes Iron Crow Theatre Resident Artist
* The Actor or Stage Manager appears through the courtesy of Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
CREATIVE TEAM
BOOK, MUSIC, LYRICS
MAX VERNON
THEY / THEM
DIRECTOR
SEAN ELIAS*+
HE / HIM
PRODUCER
NATKA BIANCHINI+
SHE / HER
STAGE MANAGER
HALEY BAUGUES
SHE / HER
MUSIC DIRECTOR / KEYS
MICHELLE HENNING
SHE / HER
COSTUME DESIGN
XORLALI PLANGE
HE / HIM
SET DESIGN & FABRICATION
JAMES V. RAYMOND
HE / HIM
LIGHTING DESIGN
THOMAS P. GARDNER+
HE / HIM
PROPS DESIGN
SOPH RISCIGNO
THEY / THEM
SOUND DESIGN / A1
ZACH SEXTON+
HE / HIM
INTIMACY DIRECTOR
SHAWNA POTTER+
SHE / HER
FIGHT DIRECTOR
MALLORY SHEAR
SHE / HER
ASST. STAGE MANAGER
JANELL HILL
SHE / HER
ASST. STAGE MANAGER
LAUREN MARSH
SHE / HER
PRODUCTION ASST.
JENNIFER BARNETTE
SHE / HER
DRAG CONSULTANT
BRANDON ROSS
HE / HIM
GUITAR
JAMIE WILLIAMS
HE / HIM
GUITAR II
JEFFERSON HIRSHMAN
HE / HIM
BASS
JARED DAVIS
HE / HIM
DRUMS
BRETT SCHATZ
HE / HIM
MARKETING
MICKEY MOULDER+
SHE / HER
+ denotes Iron Crow Theatre Resident Artist
* The Actor or Stage Manager appears through the courtesy of Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
PROGRAM
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILSON FREEMAN
As we approach the 2025/2026 season, the stakes feel higher. Not just for Iron Crow Theatre, but for our community. As queer and trans voices are once again under threat, as anti-LGBTQ+ legislation resurges, as hate crimes climb, and as rhetoric from the far right grows louder and more dangerous, I am reminded that our very existence, as a theatre and as a people, are acts of survival.
This season, we’ve named that truth aloud: The Season of Survival.
Max Vernon’s The View Upstairs sits at the heart of this call to survive. Inspired by the tragic 1973 arson attack on the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans, the musical remembers the 32 queer souls who were lost in what remained the deadliest attack on our community until the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016. Justice was never served. The broader public looked away. Families disowned their dead. And yet, Max Vernon takes this forgotten history and transforms it into something defiant, electric, and deeply queer: a celebration of love, resilience, sex, and chosen family.
This work doesn’t sanitize our history. It revels in it. It gives us camp and glitter, drag and desire, heartache and laughter, cruising and connection. It reminds us that survival is not only about enduring tragedy, but also about embracing pleasure, intimacy, and radical love in the face of erasure. It asks us to step into the Upstairs Lounge and imagine what it means to build family, to forgive, and to love each other fiercely; even when the world outside would rather we disappear.
For Iron Crow Theatre, producing The View Upstairs is both an act of remembrance and an act of resistance. It insists that queer lives matter, that queer history matters, and that queer joy—matters most of all.
Yours in solidarity, pride, and in survival,
Sean Elias
Director, The View Upstairs
Producing Artistic Director, Iron Crow Theatre
“Producing The View Upstairs is both an act of remembrance and an act of resistance. It insists that queer lives matter, that queer history matters, and that queer joy—matters most of all”
— SEAN ELIAS
Director,
The View Upstairs
RUN TIME:
Approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes with no intermission.
CONTENT:
This production includes themes of homophobia, violence, grief, trauma, drug use, suicide, mental illness, and loss, as well as explicit language, sexual situations, sexual content, partial nudity (including exposure of the buttocks), and simulated violence. The production design features loud sound effects, haze, props that create sounds similar to gunshots, and bright, strobing, and reflective lighting effects. Viewer discretion is advised.
