"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make." — Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931)
Coming to Oasis beginning on January 16 is what may be the scariest, funniest the venerable club has offered to date. "Dragcula" will be a comic adaptation of the 1931 vampire film classic cast entirely with queer and trans performers. The show promises to take the audience back to the 1930s by presenting "Dragcula" in living greyscale, meaning that everything on stage will be grey, with the exception of Dracula's favorite snack, blood.
The grey colors are meant to recreate the feel of movies that were made in the early 1930s, when films were almost universally in black and white. The producers want the audience to feel as though an old horror movie were actually unfolding before them, albeit with jokes that they'll quote on their way home. The show will run from the 16 until February 1, Thursdays through Saturdays at 7pm.
"Dracula" was born in 1897, when Bram Stoker wrote his legendary vampire novel. The creepy book was a best seller and was successfully adapted for the stage in 1927, when a B list actor named Bela Lugosi took Broadway by storm with his highly stylized performance as the thirsty count.
Lugosi reprised his role in Universal Pictures' film adaptation of the play and became an instant movie star. The film was a smash hit and launched Universal as the premiere producer of monster movies like "Frankenstein" (1931), "The Mummy" (1932), and "Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), a grisly epic which also starred Lugosi. The actor became typecast and until his death in 1956, he essayed one horror role after another.
Queer new bite
"Dracula" became a favorite among moviegoers, with the story being remade dozens of times. And now the latest adaptation comes to Oasis. According to Chris Steele, producer and director of the Oasis production, "Dracula" has its roots in queerness.
"Bram Stoker began writing it just one month after his flamboyant queer colleague Oscar Wilde was jailed for indecency," Steele said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter. "Dracula is a flamboyant, charismatic, foreigner who makes people reckon with their most repressed desires. With the politics of the world at the moment, we want to create a show where people unleash their inner vampire, where they feel empowered to embrace even the weirdest, most taboo parts of themselves. We're building a show where the things that make a character an other actually make them more powerful than sticking to the status quo."
Author to author
According to Steele, there's been a lot of speculation over the years regarding Stoker's own queerness.
"The novel really feels like he's struggling to reconcile with what is publicly acceptable and what the heart wants, which is something every queer person has to do sometime in their life," said Steele. "Stoker even wrote a series of very intimate letters to revolutionary gay icon Walt Whitman that basically equated to the ye olde equivalent of a Grindr profile description, gave his weight, height, and even described his very full lips. We can't know for sure but I'd say that guy was at least bi."
Since this is first and foremost a drag show, audiences can expect male characters like Dracula and Van Helsing the vampire hunter to be played by local drag performers, most of whom are trans or nonbinary. Bay Area icon Mudd the Two Spirit will be playing the count, and they'll be going toe to toe with cosplay drag legend KaiKai Bee Michaels as Van Velsing.
Blatant kink
"It's top tier talent across the cast, playing with gender and lampooning ideas of what's proper and presentable in society," said Steele. "Drag transcends gender. I feel really lucky to get to work with a cast of absolute drag superstars."
The novel and the Lugosi film won't be the only things getting the once over in the show. SoMa's kink subculture has found its way into the script.
"So much of the comedy of this show is just us exposing and being blatant about the kink relationships in the novel," Steele said. "Dracula is everyone's Dom, Renfield (Dracula's servant) is a bratty bottom into degradation. Van Helsing is an expert on the paranormal, and a noted shibari power top. Where else can you see a production of 'Dracula' that calls Dr. Seward a beta cuck and regularly refers to Dracula as daddy?"
Steele added that it's not necessary to see the Lugosi film in order to appreciate this show.
"We are telling the whole story of Dracula," Steele said. "You don't even need to know who Dracula is to have fun at this show. But if you're a horror cinephile like me, or love the original Gothic novel, then you're gonna get an extra layer of funny. The cast is already discussing the newly released Eggers' 'Nosferatu' and there's jokes about that in the show too. Oasis is a place that celebrates decadence even in the darkest corners of the disco-lit dance floor. We want the audience to get into it. Come in your best Gothic garb. Pull out your puff sleeves, your ball gowns, your capes and top coats and come scream with us."
'Dragcula,' January 16-February 1, Thursdays-Saturdays, 7pm, Oasis, 298 11th St. $38.90-$60.40, 21+ only. www.sfoasis.com
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