In Baltimore, a volunteer-run theater company embraces rock, gore and excess

On a busy block in north central Baltimore, there’s a former movie theater that houses something macabre.

“Here’s our gore locker full of some intestines and hearts,” says Patrick Staso, as he shows World Cafe around the warehouse hidden within the dark hallways of the former theater. “We’ve disemboweled goats, pigs, human-sized rats. We’ve cut off limbs; we’ve cut off heads. It varies.”

Don’t worry: This viscus is of the foam variety, and Staso isn’t a deranged butcher; he’s the executive director of the Baltimore Rock Opera Society, a volunteer-driven theater company.

“But with the mission of creating the most spectacular theater that you’ve ever seen for the next 7,000 years,” Staso says. “Our motto is In Panton, Redundo — ‘everything in excess.’ If you can dream it, we want to make it.”

For our latest Sense of Place trip to Baltimore, World Cafe host Raina Douris sat down with Staso to learn more about this delightfully weird community of artists that could’ve only come out of Baltimore.

The Baltimore Rock Opera Society, or BROS, has staged productions like Garbage Quest, an homage to retro video games; Ceremony of the Faceless, about faceless demons; and Glitterus: Dragon Rising, about the world’s last dragon.

If it all sounds a little unconventional — or even unsophisticated — for an opera, that’s on purpose.

“One of our artistic values is what we call unibrow, which is the merging of highbrow and lowbrow art together,” Staso says.

If you want to keep going down the Baltimore music rabbit hole, check out our conversation with Izzi Bavis, evening host at WTMD. She shares some of her top picks for music from up-and-coming talent in the city.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.