Oasis Arts’ SOMA Soundstage and Film Production Studio Opens Its Doors

The San Francisco Bay Area’s LGBTQ+ artistic community has an exciting new resource: Oasis Arts’ new film and video production studio has begun operations in the heart of San Francisco’s SOMA district. When the studio is fully operational, it will span 5,000 square feet and have the capacity to employ more than 100 queer, trans, and drag performers as actors, designers, and crew members. This accessible space for LGBTQ+ filmmakers, video artists, and photographers will serve to amplify the unique voices and stories of queer and trans people in the Bay Area.

The studio is part of Oasis Arts’ broader mission to support and provide resources for LGBTQ+ and drag artists in San Francisco — a vision that is shared by Oasis Arts’ founder and San Francisco’s first drag laureate, D’Arcy Drollinger.

Drollinger’s film “Champagne White and the Temple of Poon” (the follow-up to the hit film “Shit & Champagne”) will be the first project filmed in the space, and then Drollinger hopes that many other artists will be able to make creative use of it — either with the support of Oasis Arts or at an affordable price. 

“The goal is to elevate and celebrate these artists,” says Drollinger. “Once all the funding is in, I’d love to offer a fully functioning and fully equipped studio, so people would have access to cameras and lighting packages, things like teleprompters — everything they need…. I would love to raise enough money that Oasis Arts could invest, say, $25,000 into someone’s project…. I’m doing my movie on a very shoestring budget, but 90% of the money is just going to pay designers and technicians and crew and actors. It’s going back to the community.” 

News of the studio has generated a lot of excitement in San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ and drag communities. Many performers and creators have expressed their happiness about the prospect of working in a space that is specifically designed to cater to their needs and interests.

For these communities, which have historically been denied access to this sort of resource, Oasis Arts’ studio is poised to become a creative catalyst — an indispensable  asset to queer and trans artists throughout the Bay Area and beyond.