Walk down Connecticut Avenue in downtown D.C., and you’ll pass the Farragut North Metro stop, coffee shops, department stores, and a Morton’s steakhouse. But this month, when you turn into one of those storefronts, you’ll find something unexpected: A two-floor, ’90s-era rock club.

There, you’ll hear Angel Number Nine, a fictional band brought to life by Rorschach Theatre through its new production of the same name. James L. Rogers III’s 2013 novel focuses on this band and its lead singer, Angel — a heavy-drinking rocker with a complicated past who meets Cupid, the mythological god of desire, at a bar.

Rorschach’s co-founder, Jenny McConnell Frederick, has been working on an adaptation of the novel on and off for the past nine years. With live shows back in person after the pandemic, it was time to put this one on the stage.

“The spiritual experience of listening to live music in a group, you can’t beat that, ” McConnell Frederick says. “And that’s what I wanted to happen. You know, I want to feel that for everybody.”

The performance space is a former Rochester Big & Tall clothing store that closed in 2019. Rorschach even kept a few posters and other relics from the old store on its walls (including a sign laying out the “Ten reasons why everyone will wish they were in our shoes”). Old shelves that once held shirts and ties now hold liquor bottles used as props for the bar on set.

But it wasn’t the theater’s first choice of venue.

“We were imagining we’d be in a grungy warehouse in Ivy City,” says McConnell Frederick. Instead, the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District (BID) helped Rorschach find vacant retail space downtown where they might be able to host the show.

“We looked at a couple of places in this neighborhood, but then we walked in here and just fell in love … it just had the right vibe, ” McConnell Frederick says of the former Rochester’s space, which Maryland-based real estate firm Lerner Enterprises has leant to the theater company for the past few months. “We were like, there’s so much we can do with it,” she adds.

Rorschach is used to creating theater in odd settings.

While the company’s mailing address is technically the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street, Rorschach has been putting on shows in local churches, office building lobbies, and outdoor spaces for over two decades. Throughout the pandemic, the company has delivered interactive stories in boxes that arrive at audience members’ homes. Angel Number Nine is the culmination of the latest series, which focused on D.C. music history.

In keeping with that theme, the ground floor of the venue features posters with little-known facts about D.C. music; a listening room where guests can listen to mixtapes curated by local artists and tastemakers, like Amanda MacKaye; and second-hand vinyl records for purchase.

The show itself takes place in the basement, where audience members can order cheap beer and hot dogs from a bar that’s part of the actual set. (Drinks are available for purchase before and after the show, and during intermission. Guests can even bring in outside food to eat before the show.)

The scenes take place around the audience members, who sit cabaret-style in the middle of the action. Longtime D.C.-music fans will recognize references to local bands and venues, like the Black Cat.

Shawn Northrip, a local musician and high school teacher, composed the show’s music and called on some of his longtime collaborators to play it. The band makes up much of the cast: Kate Kenworthy plays Angel, the lead singer; Billy Bob Bonson (Northrip’s stage name) portrays bassist Wally; Veronica Rose Bundy (of the in-real-life, Baltimore-based band In Shallow Seas) plays Delia on lead guitar; James Carlos Lacey is Jesús on drums; and Lauren Farnell takes the role of Connie on rhythm guitar.

The play itself deals with heavy subject matter: recovery from substance abuse, sexual assault, and suicide are all themes that come up throughout. It also deals with romance, friendship, sibling relationships, and self-exploration. The set includes a projector and video screens that display dream sequences and flashbacks from the past, placing the audience in the middle of Angel’s complicated world.

Northrip says he used descriptions from the novel to create the show’s sound.

“It should sound right out of the mid-’90s D.C. rock scene,” Northrip says. “When I was a kid, I played here [in D.C.], all over the place. And I just basically wrote the same stuff.”

Guests can buy cassette tapes of the band’s original music at the venue, where local acts will play sets before some of the Angel Number Nine performances.

And if you’re wondering, “Why the ’90s?” just look elsewhere in the District, where the owners of the 9:30 Club recently opened The Atlantis, a replica of the original club on F Street NW where many staple punk bands got their start. Or, Northrip says, just ask his students.

“My students are all into the ’90s vibe,” he says. “They talk about the ’90s like it was the cool, good old days.”

So, grab a beer, catch a show, and travel back in time.

Rorschach Theatre’s Angel Number Nine runs at 1020 Connecticut Ave NW now through July 30; Shows on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $10-$45. Run time is approximately two hours with one 15-minute intermission. The show has a content warning.