TELL: Crying Out Loud (in person & live-streaming)

TELL is a monthly queer storytelling show hosted and curated by Drae Campbell. It is the longest running event at the Bureau! 10 years and going. Each month there is a different theme and a different line up of queer artists who tell true stories from their lives on a theme.

The theme for November is Crying Out Loud, featuring storytellers Ronnie Mae Painter, rexylafemme, and Zo Tipp.

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:

youtube.com/@bgsqd

Suggested donation to benefit the storytellers and the Bureau: $10.

All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD

Drae Campbell is the host and curator of TELL, an award winning podcast that can be found anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Theater: The Nosebleed (Lincoln Center Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theater & National Tour, Lortel Nominated), Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater), Only You Can Prevent Wildfires (Teatro Circulo), My Old Man (Dixon Place), Storm.Still (DirectorFest, Drama League), La Cage Aux Folles (Barrington Stage Company)

Film and TV:Senior Escort Service, Blunderpuss, It’s Very Common, TOW.TV: Bull, New Amsterdam.BFA, The University Of The Arts. Ig @draebiz and @tellqueerz. 

A native New Yorker born and raised in Astoria, Queens, Ronnie Mae Painter is a Brooklyn-based artist who’s primary media are painting on canvas and works on paper. She is also a published author and poet. Her literary works can be found in the anthology “Are Italians White”, edited by Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno. Painter’s experiences growing up as a woman of African-American and Italian-American biracial descent during the 1970s are transcended through both her visual and literary works in energetic movements and a shouting tone. 

rexylafemme (aka rex renée) is a trans, multi-gendered, multi-genre writer, actor, and healing practitioner from Jackson Heights, NYC. As a working class, gender-abundant artist, 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, he explores the power of revolutionary love in the face of loveless political structures. rexy is also a practitioner of multiple healing modalities and offers workshops and mentorship on spirituality and building intuition with a focus on healing as a revolutionary practice. rexy’s book of poems and illustrations, when there is no one and there is everyone is available from Magic Helicopter Press. They graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in 2024.

Zo Tipp (they/them) is a Jewish Japanese American performer. TV: Only Murders in the Building, American Horror Story, Dickinson. NY Theater credits include INTAR, Playwrights Horizons, Pan Asian Rep, Cherry Lane, CSC/OSF Play On! Fest, Redbull, Rattlestick. Workshops at Roundabout Theater, NYTW, Breaking the Binary, Playwrights Realm, Pride Plays, The Actors Fund, and many more. Independent film and webseries appearances screened at Newfest and Outfest. Audio narration work for The New Yorker and New York Mag on Apple News. Zo has sung with a few opera companies in NY, as well as at Birdland, and Spectrum. They also teach the Feldenkrais Method. www.zotipp.com