Airline Highway is a rollicking play that, with great insight, humor, and subtlety, examines a tight knit community of "outsiders" over the course of a single, legendary day. The Hummingbird Hotel is the figurative or literal home for a group of strippers, French Quarter service workers, hustlers, and poets who are bound together by their bad luck, bad decisions, and complete lack of pretense. Presiding over them is Miss Ruby, a beloved former burlesque performer who has requested a funeral before she dies. As the people whose lives she has touched gather to celebrate her, they must face themselves, each other, and the consequences of the choices they have made. Airline Highway shows us the tenuous hold that community, authenticity, and real-time ritual have on a rapidly gentrifying New Orleans.

In the parking lot of the Hummingbird Motel, off the titular highway near New Orleans, the hotel’s residents have gathered to celebrate the life of Miss Ruby, an iconic burlesque queen who has been a mother figure to them all. Miss Ruby’s life is nearing its end, and she requests that her funeral take place while she is still alive so she can attend the festivities. As the Mardi Gras-esque celebration continues into the night, the stories of the residents, their pain and disappointments unfold.

Metairie was the first suburb of New Orleans; an outgrowth to the west by young families seeking larger lots, open air, and affordable new housing. Those suburbanites shared much in common with previous generations of New Orleanians who had migrated westward from the original town (now the French Quarter) to high land along the Mississippi River and the Metairie Ridge. When Jefferson Parish was established in 1825, it included all New Orleans faubourgs west of Felicity Street--what we now know as Uptown New Orleans. These would become the first cities in Jefferson Parish: Carrolton, Jefferson, and Lafayette. By the early 1900s, the westward expansion continued into what we now call Old Metairie and Bucktown. During the mid-20th century, Metairie boomed and is now one of the largest communities in Louisiana. While many residents consider themselves New Orleanians, even those born generations after their families moved to the suburb, Metairie has its own unique history.