The View UpStairs at Evolution Theatre Company

There are three significant dates that changed lives... Stonewall June 28, 1969 The Up Stairs Lounge June 24, 1973 Pulse Nightclub June 12, 2016this is the story of oneThe View UpStairs tells the story of one of these events and the people that found a safe haven in The Up Stairs Lounge until the evening of June 24, 1973, when an unknown individual turned their some kind of paradise into a blazing inferno that took 32 lives and changed the lives of hundreds and an en-tire community. It took less than 20 minutes for fire to utterly consume that hidden, second-story oa-sis where more than 90 working-class men and women had gathered one Sunday night for the biggest drink special of their weekend: the Beer Bust. Just imagine the merrimentone dollar for two hours of unlimited draft beer, plus a returnable 50-cent deposit for the pitcher. (Hey, this was New Orleans in the 70s!) But a door opens, and flames spread, and the fun abruptly ends. The ensuing catastrophe would be the deadliest fire on record in New Orleans history and the worst mass killing of LGBTQ+ individuals in U.S. history until the 2016 massacre at Pulse in Orlando. Thats a brief synopsis of the destruction of the Up Stairs Lounge, understood intellectually and from a distance But you are now about to get a wholly different view, a more imaginative and intimate perspective. Through the fanta-sia of musical theatre, The View UpStairs will do the impossible. This musical will convey you alongside Wes, our modern-day millennial influencer protagonist, into the bar before it burned. There, you will see the Up Stairs Lounge in a way that historians can only yearn for: joyous, full of the revelry of men and women crooning beside the piano, yet untouched by its tragic fate. You will hear the laughter and feel the love that commingled inside The Up Stairs Lounge.