TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.

Chance is the theme of the seventeenth installment of TELL. Featuring Hana Malia, Camille Atkinson, Jay Lucero, and Cara Kildruff. 

$10 suggested donation – no one turned away for lack of funds

Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Drae has been featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and on stages all over NYC. Drae’s directing work has appeared in Iceland, NYC, Budapest and in the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The short film Drae wrote and starred in with Rebecca Drysdale, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in festivals globally. Drae won the grand prize at the first annual San Miguel De Allende Storytelling Festival in Mexico. She once reigned as Miss LEZ and also got dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell hosts and curates a monthly queer storytelling show called TELL at BGSQD. Check her out online!  www.draecampbell.com

New York vocalist Camille B. Atkinson has been performing and working as a singer, actor, voice over artist and dancer for over 20 years. She has fronted 5 NYC bands singing Blues, Soul, Funk, Pop, Motown, Country, Rhythm & Blues, Standards, Musical Theater, Art-Rock and Early Jazz. She has sung on countless EPs, demos, at weddings, in concerts, fundraisers and at private events. Her earliest exposure to music came from the Catholic church where she began singing in the choir in her hometown of New Orleans, as well as the lively Jazz musicians that played on the streets near Jackson Square. To get a feel for her voice, she has been called “the love child of Janis Joplin and Ella Fitzgerald”. She possesses a high school diploma in Theater Arts from Interlochen Arts Academy and a BFA in Acting from Ithaca College. She is a seasoned, well rounded theater artist who skills include stage management, directing, producing, songwriting, playwrighting, costume design, wigs, props and make up artistry. She is currently taking on various front and backstage roles in “Truffles! A murder mystery dinner theater experience”. She also performs in an acoustic duo called GUMBO with guitarist/vocalist Mike Cobb. For more information on her upcoming events please visit her website.

web site 
music
film
voice over

Cara Kildruff started her stand-up career in the classrooms and principal’s offices of the New Britain, CT public school system. Voted “Class Clown” in high school, she took a break to attend film school in the hopes of becoming a “serious” filmmaker. Two schools and a theatre degree later, Cara found herself working on Block Island by day and at the suggestion and offer of a free ticket from the owner of the Empire Theatre, got up on stage to amuse the tourists before the show. Since moving to NYC fifteen years ago, she spent four soul sucking years toiling for Corporate America and had a pre-mid-life crisis. She quit her job, took a three week comedy workshop, a one year program in comedy performance and writing and had been doing stand-up ever since. Cara was a member of the sketch comedy group “Hottie Grandma”, performed at the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival, has appeared on here!TV’s “Hot Gay Comics Live”, performed at clubs and colleges all over, including the Friar’s Club, and is currently a co-host of “Talking About”, a monthly LGBTQ program on Queens Public Television. She recently debuted her first solo show, “How I Became an Unskilled Laborer” at the People’s Improv Theater as well as participated in the PIT’s first LGBTQ Comedy Festival in 2015.

Jay Lucero is a college student majoring in creative writing. A few of his interests are theatre, music and fashion. He’s been acting since his sophomore year in high school in different school productions. Jay Lucero is the recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. award at Queensborough Community College. Jay explores gender through his writing and he hopes to one day publish a funny memoir where he documents his queer childhood.

Hana Malia is a proud public school teacher, prouder (mourning) born and bred NYC lifer, theater artist, and author. Her work has appeared on stages (think Dixon Place, La Mama, sticky bar floors, and Carnegie Hall), and pages (think smut, obscure poetry magazines, and the zines you keep treasured in your bathroom reading collection) that speak life into fat filthy femme survival, city silences and shouts, aging classroom blackboards, and campy musical rewrites. Traditionally a dinner table story teller and impressionist, Hana is thrilled to put the pieces together at TELL and see what comes out of her mouth.