The Queer Woods by Mimi McGurl

Friday, October 11th at 7:30pm

at Le Petit Versailles Garden

What grows, lives, thrives in the space of uncultivated wildness? What does it mean to be in a natural environment? Queer spaces are most often conceived of as built environments; the bookstore, the club, a neighborhood full of rainbow flags. This talk proposes that forests, woodland meadows, and maybe even a large backyard have been there too, offering those of us who never quite fit in a place for self-discovery and acceptance. One part tree science lecture, one part queer literary history, and finally, this will be a meditation on the wilderness as a celebration of diverse humanity and its infinite possibilities.

MIMI McGURL is a freelance theater director, dramaturg, and landscape gardener in the Catskills. She is an associate artist with the Farm Arts Collective (most recently directing Tannis Kowalchuk’s Decompositions) and has also collaborated on several projects with the North American Cultural Laboratory (Courage, The Weather Project, Shakespeare’s Will). She has taught writing classes and directed plays at the Catskill Art Space, NYC’s WOW Cafe Theatre (the Paul Robeson Project), Chashama, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Theatre Rhinoceros, and Highways in Los Angeles. She has also been adjunct faculty at NYU, ACT’s MFA program, Mills College, the University of California, Irvine where she received her MFA and Stanford University where she received her PhD.