Photo Essay: At Casa Susanna, Community Comes Home

On a hot summer evening in upstate New York, a small black box theater in the middle of the woods was buzzing. Cocktails being whirled together in a blender bounced off the sounds of a large projection screen being unrolled nearby. The Avalon Lounge in Catskill, New York, a combination bar and live performance space, was home for the night's free community screening event from WMHT. On the ticket tonight? Casa Susanna, a documentary exploring the physical refuge of the same name for transgender and crossdressing men in the Catskill mountains.

In the 1950s and ’60s, an underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge at a modest house in the Catskills region of New York. Known as Casa Susanna. Told through the memories of those who visited the house, the film provides a moving look back at a secret world where the persecuted and frightened found freedom, acceptance and, often, the courage to live out of the shadows.