Drama Masks: Drag haven Oasis reopens with a bang—and some questions

This is Drama Masks, a Bay Area performing arts column from a born San Franciscan and longtime theatre artist in an N95 mask. I talk venue safety and dramatic substance, or the lack thereof. 

What a difference a year makes. Seriously, it was one year ago when we packed glamorous drag club Oasis for Heklina’s memorial, only to learn the club she’d co-founded would close after one final New Year’s bash. Now, as if to commemorate that announcement, we returned to a newly renovated Oasis this past Friday for its grand re-opening.

I picked up two distinct moods. The more prominent was unabashed joy. Outside, I stood next to a queer elder whose reminiscence about late, great camp performance venue Hypnodrome made him appreciate Oasis’ return all the more: “I took this place for granted!”

_{Tila Pia performed at the Oasis reopening. Photos by David Schnur}

Yet, there was also a subtle undercurrent of—worry? caution?—that this indie venue only got a stay of execution through the most unlikely of circumstances, and what that might portend for the rest of the scene.

Club regular Sky Stevens, who was at the re-opening with several members of his family ensconced in the VIP area, is the son of Silicon Valley philanthropists Mark Stevens (NVIDIA board) and Mary Stevens, who said she went to this address’s previous club in the ‘80s. Just days before the announced New Year’s closure, the Stevens family donated millions to allow Drollinger & co. to purchase the Oasis building and reopen under the auspices of Oasis Arts.

When I interviewed Drollinger after the ribbon-cutting, she said the Stevens’ gift will have no sway over the club’s notoriously raunchy content. That’s great, but it’s hard to overlook that not all indie venues would be granted this miraculous turn of fortune without strings attached.

One would also be remiss not to mention the precarious time in which the club re-opens: weeks after the SCOTUS okayed banning trans athletes, and days after Hegseth said enlisted men should be checked for “testosterone deficiency.”

_{Miss Shugana go-gos for her life and 48 Hills publisher Marke B. checks out the renovations at Oasis. Photos by David Schnur.}

“Now, he wants gender-affirming care the other way?” asked John Shepherd, a 30-year-old Memphis, TN transplant who’s called Oasis his “home” since attending Rocky Horror there in 2021. He was glad to see the club back, but also wondered about its sustainability. “A lot of it is tied to late-night drinking, and a lotta younger folks aren’t really doing that anymore. That’s not a lot of the revenue for these places. Especially in the city, where things are so expensive.”

It’s also where politics and identity are inextricable. Incidentally, only one sitting politician showed up for the re-opening: Congressional candidate and D1 Supervisor Connie Chan. She was inconspicuous, dressed in denim and not drawing attention. It was my first time meeting her, and her first time visiting Oasis. She told me that preserving queer businesses is as important to her as preserving the city’s Chinese history, which she takes personally. 

And Chan wasn’t shy as to say exactly what’s needed for that preservation: “Investment! The city’s budget should continue to figure out ways. I know the city is facing a budget deficit at the moment, but if we can make sure the city’s budget continues to invest in small business and prioritizing our LGBT community and safe spaces—this is how we need to think about our city’s budget.”

(Incidentally, the last time I saw D’Arcy was at the opening of the Barbary Stage, where she stood alongside Chan’s congressional opponent, the former SF supe who tried to us the Trans March for a photo-op with disastrous results. He was not at Oasis’ re-opening.)

Before we headed inside, I asked Drollinger about the venue’s future. She’s told me she’s hoping to diversify the types of shows presented, wants to give her staff (the majority of whom returned from last year) living wages, and, above all, wants keep it a safe space in this time of daily ICE raids.

“We want to be a place that feels 100% safe. We plaques on all the doors in the bathrooms that say ‘If see homophobia, transphobia happening, tell someone right away,’ because those people need to be taken out of the building. We fight to have this be a safe space.”

That may be why the joy outweighed the worry that night. It’s fair to ask how other venues could ever repeat Oasis’ resurrection, but it’s also worth celebrating that resurrection for all its worth.

Beauty and the Beast at The Orpheum

There’s a lesson to be learned about good and bad effects. According to the program, this show’s curtain speech was performed by the late Angela Lansbury, her voice recorded for posterity. Yet Christina Rose Hall, the actress who plays Mrs. Potts, the animated role Lansbury indelibly made her own onscreen, does such a spot-on Lansbury that one would think Hall delivered the curtain speech lines from backstage. That’s a good effect. Unfortunately, the child actor playing Mrs. Potts’ child Chip does so stuffed into a tray that make them look like a severed head on a plate. We know live theatre can’t replicate the visuals of animation, but the compromise shouldn’t remind us of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. That’s a bad effect.

Other than that, Beauty and the Beast (through Augusts 9 at the Orpheum Theatre, SF) is the same Stockholm Syndrome musical we’ve all grown up with, save for a few new songs to pad out the runtime on the stage and account for otherwise unseen actions. There were a few new additions that have some troubling implications, such as the Beast (Fergie L. Philippe) now accidentally tearing off Belle’s (Kate Wesler) sleeve before she escapes to the woods. The visual of a Black man ripping the clothes of a terrified white woman is unsettling for reasons the producers clearly didn’t want to think through.

And why would they? They didn’t make this version for the deep analysis, they made it for all the people, mostly women–young and old–who showed up cosplaying in yellow Belle dresses. They seemed to have an absolute blast. Those of us who looked closer are bound to wince a little.

CO² levels typically hovered around 772pp, save for the fake smoke moments that briefly shot my Aranet4’s readings up to 2,272ppm, before dropping to 886ppm by the final bow.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST runs through August 9 at the Orpheum Theatre, SF. Tickets and further info here.

The Prince, Pt. 1 by Central Works

If there’s one word to describe Gary Graves’ scripts, the paradoxically appropriate word would be “loquacious.” How apt that his final production for his East Bay theatre troupe is an adaptation of what is now shorthand for “diabolical.”

Indeed, The Prince, Pt. 1 (through September 6 at the Berkeley City Club; Pt. 2 opens August 1) is a three-hour chat-fest in which Niccolò Machiavelli (Kevin Singer) is the Freudian Ego caught between the altruistic but violently devout Girolamo Savonarola (Mark Farrell) and unrelenting hedonist Cesare Borgia (Brennan Pickman-Thoon).

To Graves’ credit, it’s talky but mostly not dull—only the latter part of the first hour drags a bit—and it’s compelling in its dramatization of Machiavelli’s ideas about “the greater good” being one big gray area. Let’s see if the conclusion sticks the landing.

Besides, when a modern-day Epstein-lovin’ Borgia sits in the White House (which he’s destroyed), all ideas of dignity being defined by title go out the window.

CO² levels peaked around 643ppm before dropping to 579 for the final bow.

THE PRINCE, PT. 1 runs through September 6 at the Berkeley City Club. Tickets and further info here.

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