BGSQDBureau of General Services—Queer Division
BGSQD
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.
Thanks for Nothing is the theme of the 82nd TELL, on Saturday, November 19, 2022, 7 PM IN PERSON at the Bureau! Featuring: Bell, Tom Cole, rexylafemme, & Maya Suess.
The event will also be live-streamed at youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
We will pass a bag at the start of the event. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.
Bell is a multidisciplinary artist from Ireland working as a drag performer, visual artist, mediator & facilitator in Brooklyn, NY. They have a background in clown (Gaulier, Lecoq) and trained in Theatre of the Oppressed at Goldsmiths and with Ulex in Spain. Bell has performed throughout the UK and Europe, co-creating Womb With A View for Shambala Festival (Unique Festival Arena Award), creating and performing Spectrum, a show about revolutionary thinker and autistic advocate Temple Grandin for Edinburgh Fringe and performing in Dada for Girls where they won Most Outstanding Performance (London Fringe) and Most Groundbreaking Performance (Gothenburg Fringe). They are currently working on a series of portraits called People are the Worst, tattooing, performing with their drag / comedy groups Earls 2 Gearls and We’re 4 Men and writing a film.
Tom Cole is a writer and artist living in the Lower East Side. His work has been presented at Participant Inc, Petit Versailles, Thread Waxing Space, Art on Air, Dixon Place, Clocktower Gallery, ICA Boston, Performa, and the Boston Center for the Arts. He is a three-time MacDowell Playwriting fellow and a 2015 Edward Albee Foundation Playwriting fellow. He heads the New Play Commissioning Program at True Love Productions, where he has commissioned new work by Heidi Schreck, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Craig Lucas, and Sheila Callaghan, among others. He co-curates Experiments and Disorders, a literary series at Dixon Place. He has collaborated extensively with Anohni, most recently appearing in She Who Saw Beautiful Things at The Kitchen. His work has been published in several antholgies, including Grove Atlantic’s PATHETIC LITERATURE edited by Eileen Myles.
rexylafemme (aka rex renée leonowicz) is a trans multi-gendered, multi-genre writer, visual + drag artist, performer, organizer, and healer from jackson heights, nyc. as a working class, gender-abundant femme, rexy’s work is a love letter to nyc and radical communities grounded in a politics of resistance, healing, and resilience. in all of rexy’s creative forms, s/he explores the power of revolutionary love in the face of loveless political structures. rexy is also a practicing witch and offers workshops and spiritual mentorship in divination, spellwork, and building intuition with a focus on healing as a revolutionary practice.
Maya Suess is a performer, writer and nonprofit arts professional who has worn all the hats. Most recently as the Director of Programs and Fellowship at apexart, and for many years as Managing Director of the residency and artist’s collective, Flux Factory. Her work has been shown at galleries, museums, film festivals, bars and more in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan. Maya produces and emcees Unprofessional, a quarterly variety show at the Parkside Lounge.
She was born on a small island off the coast of western Canada, is a member of a coop and ex-squat in the LES, and is committed to being a part of keeping queer art alive and thriving in New York City and beyond.