A reading of a new play.
32 years before Stonewall... There was La Paloma...
Located in unincorporated Dade County, La Paloma was a gathering place for “homosexuals in evening gowns, trousered lesbians, and prostitutes.” On November 15, 1937, the Ku Klux Klan stormed La Paloma, burning crosses outside, violently attacking the club patrons and staff, and threated to burn the place down with the Dade County Sheriff’s approval. La Paloma reopened two weeks later, with the management promising “spicier entertainment than ever,” including a drag version of white robes.
Join Al Youst, the owner; Jonathan aka Butterfly, a homosexual in an evening gown; Sophia, a trousered lesbian, and Maya, a prostitute as they reclaim their story and put on a show to remember.
Andie Arthur (she/her) is a playwright and dramaturg, the co-founding Artistic Director of Lost Girls Theatre, the executive director of the South Florida Theatre League, and adjunct faculty at New World School of the Arts. She is a graduate of the BFA Playwriting Program at DePaul University and a former fellow of the Kennedy Center’s Summer Playwriting Intensive and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs’ Playwright Development Program. In 2022, she received the Howard Kleinberg Award for contributions to the health and development of the arts in South Florida.
Arthur’s plays include In Common Hours (finalist for the 2005 David Mark Cohen Award), Dueling Edwards(finalist for City Theatre’s 2012 National Short Play Contest), The Feral Spinster Society, Dinner at the End of the World, Juliet Among the Changelings, Rev. Nathaniel’s Daughter, She Flies with Her Own Wings, Abacus Jones: Boy Detective, Choose Your Own Adventure: The Lost Chapter, The Secret of the Biological Clock, and Outcasts of Eden. Her work has been seen at Theatre Lab, Eclectic Full Contact Theatre, Lost Girls Theatre, New Theatre, The Alliance Theatre Lab, The Naked Stage, The Theatre School at DePaul University, Marquette University, GableStage, and Chicago Dramatists. Her audio dramas include Blood Sisters and Where or When? (co-written with David J. Loehr)