BGSQD presents: TELL 87 – SMUT

TELL is back! After a bit of a break, we’re thrilled to welcome this fabulous event back to the Bureau!

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.

DRAE CAMPBELL’s first performance was at age 5 in a nightclub opening for a punk band. Drae has a BFA in Theater from The University of Arts in Philadelphia. Some Theater credits include: The Nosebleed (Lincoln Center Theater), Only You Can Prevent Wildfires (Ricochet Collective), Non-Consensual Relationships with Ghosts (La MaMa), My Old Man (Dixon Place), Oph3lia(HERE). TV includes “New Amsterdam,” “Bull ” and “Dinette ” (web series, directed by Shaina Feinberg). Drae has been hosting and curating TELL for more than 9 years which is now a SILVER Signal Award-winning podcast of the same name. www.draecampbell.com

Diana Lobontiu is a Romanian American playwright, actor, administrator, and educator based in Brooklyn. Diana holds a Playwriting MFA from Brooklyn College, graduated from Wellesley College with a BA in Theatre Studies and Psychology. In addition, they are an Adjunct Professor in creative writing and playwriting at Brooklyn College and NJIT, respectively. They are interested in exploring the intersections of masculinity, power, failure, oppression, absurdity, and an ongoing fixture of the human condition: loneliness. Diana was named a 2023-24 MacDowell Fellow, a 2023 Jane Hoppen Resident with Paragraph Workspace for Writers, and received the 2023 Puffin Grant for My Cousin Nelu Is Not Gay. Recent writing includes My Cousin Nelu Is Not Gay (The Brick Theater 2023, Ars Nova’s ANT Fest 2022), and Rentabutch(Bushwick Starr Reading Series Finalist 2023). Diana has performed their solo show Sfânta: Hell Bent on Heaven, about a teenage wannabe Russian Orthodox saint, at the Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Kalamazoo, Oregon, and Orlando Fringe Festivals.

Rudy Ramirez is a director, writer and teaching artist specializing in the development of new work and new artists. They have directed and developed work for a number of organizations around the country, including the Contemporary American Theater Festival, The Lark, Latino Theater Company, National Queer Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, New York University, Octopus Theatricals, The Playwrights’ Center, Signature Theatre, and the University of Texas at Austin. They are the Associate Artistic Director of The VORTEX in Austin, TX, where they were named Best Director of 2017 in the Austin Chronicle Readers Poll. They have written and performed two autobiographical shows, Promised Land: A Radical Queer Revival and Footnotes for People Who Don’t Speak Spanish. They have an MA in Performance Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and an MFA in Directing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They are currently the Benedetti Resident Artist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts where they will be working on their musical about the life of Emma Goldman, Emma When You Need Her. 

Renée Imperato is a Stonewall Era Veteran, a Chairperson of the SAGE Advisory Council, and a member of the People’s Power Assembly.