Max Vernon's The View Upstairs

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.