It is a Saturday morning and D’Arcy Drollinger is mid-gloss application, her lips puckered and ready for a fresh sheen. Her hair is styled in a brassy blonde bouffant and her neon pink outfit is accented by heavy costume jewelry.
She has a packed schedule for the day: first, a “Pink Triangle” ceremony honoring the symbol of resistance forced on LGBTQ people in Nazi prison camps, later a fundraiser, and then rehearsals for a live drag production of “Sex and the City.”
Drollinger, 54, was just named San Francisco’s -and the nation’s- first drag laureate. Being first is exciting, but it’s also a lot of pressure.
“It is like being thrown into a white room with a whole bunch of paint,” she said, sitting in her closet, framed by an overstuffed rack of bright gowns and costumes. Above her sits a row of wigs mounted on Styrofoam heads: a legion of blank-faced divas watching on as Drollinger shares anecdotes, wisecracks and an agenda for her new role.
San Francisco creates first drag laureate in US
San Francisco is the first city in the United States to crown a drag laureate. Drollinger will receive a $55,000 stipend from the city over 18 months, and is tasked with serving as “an ambassador for San Francisco’s LGBTQ+, arts, nightlife and entertainment communities.”
“It’s the right place because they’re the only people doing it,” Drollinger said of San Francisco’s trailblazing status.
From the Compton Cafeteria riot to the political career of gay activist Jose Sarria, San Francisco has long been a bastion of LGBTQ culture and community, Drollinger said. “Drag is synonymous with San Francisco already,” she said.
It’s no coincidence that the city’s announcement comes at a time of rising animosity toward drag. “When you say no drag, San Francisco says, ‘hold my earrings,” Sister Roma, another well-known queen, and a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, said at a May 18 ceremony announcing Drollinger’s new title.
Across the country, there has been a wave in recent years of anti-LGBTQ legislation, some of it targeted specifically at drag performers. Various GOP politicians, joined by some conservative media, have pushed the narrative that drag performers are grooming children.
“Drag performers are so much more benign than what this misinformation is,” Drollinger said.
Much of the rhetoric is predicated on an assumed fear, Drollinger said. She said she doesn’t think people are actually afraid of drag. It has existed for 400 years as an art form, since Shakespeare, she said.
“I put a whole lot of makeup on my face and a big wig … you put a red nose on me and suddenly I am a clown and clowns have been entertaining people for a long time,” she said. The difference, Drollinger said, is that drag performers overwhelmingly identify as LGBTQ.
For people within the community, the kind of rhetoric being pushed poses a real danger, she said. Her club has begun active shooter trainings in recent years and upped security.
“Our lives are at stake; this is not a fun little game that you’re playing it’s our lives,” Drollinger said.
What is a drag laureate?
Drag can sometimes be wrongly cast off as entertainment for entertainment’s sake − mere fluff, Drollinger said.
Not the drag ambassador, the drag president, or the drag mayor, Drollinger is the drag laureate. The invocation of a certain other laureate is no accident, she said: drag is high art just like poetry.
“My life’s journey has been and continues to be to be taken seriously,” said Drollinger, who takes her influences from vaudeville and slapstick comedy greats such as the Zucker brothers.
Yes, drag plays on pop culture but that makes it revelatory, not reductive, she said.
“What makes drag special,” Drollinger said, “and why I think drag is important as an art form is that it does magnify everything. It makes everything larger than life and it is very interesting when you look at something through a magnifying glass because a lot of times it looks very different…. when you can dissect something and look at it differently, your perspective changes”
What will the drag laureate do?
Drollinger’s new gig is being added to a long list of other jobs. She operates Oasis, a popular nightclub and cabaret, teaches a weekly dance class, runs a non-profit, and produces films and popular stage shows such as “Sex and the City” and “Golden Girls” live. “I have a tendency to say yes to things and see where the road takes me,” she said.
Now that the road has led her here – she’s stepping into the role decisively (a harder feat than you might imagine in stilettos.)
She has a central message for her time in office: Be more fabulous. Fabulous means being authentic, Drollinger said.
“I can put on wigs and costumes and boas and fingernails and eyelashes but that doesn’t really make fabulous – that can make pretty. Fabulous is letting us see inside you, letting people see the real you in whatever way you want that to be,” she said.
“I want to be a beacon,” added Drollinger, whose eyes are heavily hooded by fake lashes and hands adorned by French tip nails. Her dogma is: the bigger your fabulous gets, the less room there is for hate and hostility.
