"You're in my spotlight," Pandora Boxx says with a coo as she playfully shoos a particularly excited gay boy off of the stage. "This is my spotlight."

It's late Thursday night, hurtling toward Friday morning, at the weekly Tilt-a-Whirl party at Central Avenue nightclub Tilt, and drag queen Pandora Boxx is holding court. As emcee of the event, Pandora - impossible to miss with her bright blonde hair, sleek black dress, brilliant blue jewelry, and tall, slender figure - flirts with the boys, banters with co-host Megan Carter, and introduces the drag queens and kings performing that night. She even does a number of her own, lip synching to Britney Spears' "3" with threeway-teasing choreography featuring two barely dressed male dancers. The capacity crowd of mostly college-aged kids - most of them straight- cheer, scream, and eat it up.

This is Pandora Boxx's spotlight, a spotlight she has craved for more than a decade working the local drag scene. She clearly revels in being the host of the most popular drag night in town, performing in front of literally hundreds of cheering 20- and 30-year-olds every week. And yet roughly a year ago, Pandora was ready to let it all go - pack up the heels, retire the gowns, put the wig back on the shelf. She - actually he, Michael Steck, the man behind the woman - had had enough.

"I have a love-hate relationship with drag," Steck says. "Because I've been doing it for so long, I felt I needed to take it to the next level or do something different. I'm very much a believer that life is about change and growing, and I felt I was getting stagnant here, lip synching to other peoples' songs."

So last year, Steck made a decision: if something didn't change, he was going to pick an end date, and box Pandora.

But something did change - a lot of things, actually. In addition to taking over Tilt-a-Whirl in early 2009, Pandora was voted Rochester's best drag queen by City Newspaper readers in November. That same month, local theater company Method Machine staged Steck's first full-length original play, the murder-mystery-comedy "Lipstick Massacre," which sold out its original run at MuCCC and which will return this spring for a stint at Geva Theatre's NextStage.

And perhaps biggest of all, next week Pandora's spotlight will extend to the national stage as she debuts as a contestant on the second season of "RuPaul's Drag Race," a reality TV competition on the Logo network.

On the eve of Pandora's big bow, Steck looks back on where he's been, but more importantly, he's as focused as ever about where he and Pandora are going. "I put it out to the universe: if things don't change, I'm going to be done," Steck says. "I think the universe is saying, ‘Keep those panties on, lady!'"

Getting cast in "RuPaul's Drag Race" is a huge deal for a drag performer - it's a vehicle to cross over into the mainstream, like the show's creator, host, and head judge RuPaul Charles did in the 1990's. Charles became a pop-culture icon through notable appearances in music videos and movies (both in and out of drag), recording hit songs, and even hosting his own TV talk show. With "Drag Race," Charles is giving that opportunity to a new generation of female impersonators.

Each episode sees the contestants put through a different challenge, which can range from costume design to choreography to emceeing. The weakest performers fight for a spot in the competition by lip synching for their lives; the proceedings are often hilarious, and surprisingly touching. The first season, which debuted in February 2009, garnered big buzz for Logo, MTV's fledgling gay-lesbian-themed network, and made cult stars out of several of its contestants, including Ongina, Nina Flowers, and eventual winner Bebe Zahara Benet.

Steck watched the first season with a little bitterness; he had auditioned for the original cast and just missed the cut, even appearing briefly in the Season 1 casting special. But after getting through the rough initial episodes (the production values were, in RuPaul speak, a little more "shonte" than "sashay"), he liked what he saw. It wasn't exploitative the way so many TV competitions can be.

"It was something so unique and different, and drag had been out of the mainstream for quite a while," Steck says. "And RuPaul being involved gave it credibility."

When casting started for Season 2, Steck came back with a vengeance, learning from his first attempt, and putting everything he could into his audition video and interviews with the producers. Apparently it worked; he was cast as one of the 12 contestants vying for the title of America's Next Drag Superstar. Filming for the show took place last summer, and this past weekend Steck headed out to Los Angeles for the big premiere party.

Another local drag performer, Ed Popil, also tried out for both seasons of "Drag Race" as his alter ego, Kasha Davis. Popil has worked with Pandora in various drag shows, as an actor in "Lipstick Massacre," and before that on the "Gay Means Happy Show," a public-access TV show that Steck produced a few years ago. While Popil didn't make "Drag Race" (yet; he's interested in auditioning again if it comes back for a third season), he says he's excited to see Steck and Pandora representing Rochester.

"To me it's the biggest thing the queens have out there right now," Popil says.

"We're a small group, a small niche, and [Michael] made sure he was up front. It was clear that [Pandora] made an impression," Popil says.

The competition this season looks stiff, but Popil is confident that "Pandora will not disappoint us," he says. "She is a strong personality, and I think she only eats arugula leaves. She's pure fun to watch, and I expect we will have a hoot at the weekly parties cheering her on."

Popil believes that as much as this is an opportunity for Steck, it's also one for Rochester's drag scene as a whole. "We have a really strong group of drag performers here - very different from other cities," he says. While many people - including Steck - argue that the local drag scene has lost a bit of its luster since the closing of Club Marcella's a few years ago, there's a core group of performers that are still active, and Steck's participation shines a bit of a light on the local scene again. "The community as a whole is very proud of Rochester's drag situation," Popil says.

With his national TV debut almost upon him, Steck says he's excited. "But I'm nervous," he says, "because I do video editing. I'm really happy with what I did and what I brought to the show, and I thought I was funny, but you never know." The show's official website apparently agrees with him; the bio lists Pandora as "this season's funny girl" and "a real contender for the top prize." It also contains some information Steck is less pleased with - his age, 37 - along with the dubious distinction of being named "the oldest queen in the competition."

Steck is deliberately vague on exactly when he started his drag career. "Oof - I think Jesus was in diapers," he says. "It's been a very long time. More than a decade, back to the mid-90's."

He grew up in the Rochester area and says he was always dramatically inclined, always creating characters. "My sister and I used to put on puppet shows for my parents with crazy names and characters," he says. "Part of it was because I never really liked who I was; it took a long time for me to love myself. With theater, I found my home. I could pretend to be somebody else. And drag became an extension of that."

He saw his first drag show at, of all places, the Park Avenue Festival, and was especially impressed by local drag legend Darienne Lake. "I said, ‘I want to do that,'" Steck says now. "I can be this rock-star person," even though, he says, he can't sing.

"I liked the rock-star persona, and this way I can do it, and create different characters and impressions, and have total control," he says. He adds: "I've always thought that pulling off a woman is kind of the ultimate character for a guy."

Steck certainly pulls off that character with Pandora Boxx. There are many different kinds of drag performers - some that deliberately take the idealized female form to extremes with garish make-up and outfits; some that play with gender by mixing both feminine and masculine traits. As Pandora, Steck is pretty, believably feminine, fashionable, and has a body many chromosomal females would kill for (especially those legs).

The Pandora character "has always been inside of me, waiting to claw her way out," Steck says. She evolved organically, he says, as he figured out what kind of drag was the style for him. He decided to focus on his natural sense of humor, and found inspiration from icons as wide-ranging as Catwoman and Madonna. In fact, he picked the name Pandora because of its similarity to the long-lasting pop star. Early his career he went only by Pandora, but people continually referred to him as "Pandora's Box," due to the Greek myth. After a couple of shows, Steck decided to embrace it - in part. He dropped the "s."

"I'm not possessive," he jokes.

As Steck has grown as a person, Pandora has changed as well. He recalls that at a certain point in his life he became more comfortable with sexuality - "Not sexuality as in gay, but sexuality as in sex is OK. I had horrible Catholic guilt over that, and I'm not even Catholic," he says. After a break-up, he decided to make out with someone on stage. "That changed Pandora," he says. "She became a slut, and never went back. It helped me find a character I wanted to get out."

In addition to being, well, a slut, Steck says that Pandora's other defining characteristic is her wit. "I'm really good at saying things and having people say, ‘Did she just say that?' and pause, then laugh," he says. "There are a lot of funny drag queens, but it seems now that most of the drag queens I see just want to look like a girl; that's it. That's fine, but it doesn't really make you stand out."

Popil, a.k.a. Kasha Davis, says that Steck's greatest strength is his ability to juggle being current along with his personal tastes and creativity. "At Tilt, he can do one number he loves and it'll go off as well as a Top 20 hit," Popil says. He also praises Steck's on-stage versatility: "One of the things that makes or breaks a drag queen is, Can you have a voice? Can you host a show? Can you be comedic? Can you be serious? A lot of performers don't know how to do that, but Pandora does."

David Henderson saw the evolution of Pandora first-hand. Henderson is the co-creator of Method Machine and was Steck's director for "Lipstick Massacre." He met Steck while working on a play at Nazareth College, where they were both students in the 1990's. "I've seen Michael reinvent himself so many times yet continue to maintain his personality as a performer, much like Madonna," Henderson says. "But no matter how he changes, it's all still polished and really professional."

That professionalism, coupled with Steck's unbridled ambition, is what sets him apart from most of the drag pack. Bill Levy, owner of Tilt, raves about Steck's work ethic, and marvels at how the Tilt-a-Whirl event has grown over the past year. Although the Thursday night drag showcase was already popular before Pandora took it over, the crowds keep getting larger.

"The last few weeks we've had a line waiting outside at 12:30 a.m.," he says. "We have to close the doors, and it's pretty much one out, one in because we reach capacity," which is roughly 600 people, he says. Levy attributes the popularity to a variety of elements, from a promotional partnership with 98 PXY to local DJ Jon Herbert spinning between drag sets, to the mix of clientele (he estimates that 65 percent of the Thursday-night crowd is straight young adults from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, a real crossover for what has historically been a gay club). But he also gives a chunk of the credit to Steck and Pandora.

"Pandora has exceeded any and every expectation we had going in," Levy says. She took to hosting duties "like a fish to water, a natural on stage."

Steck is also a natural at self promotion - and that's not a bad thing. "One thing I've learned from Pandora is that relentless pursuit of success, whatever it may be," says Ed Popil. Steck "truly puts himself out there," Popil says. "When you talk to him, it's not, ‘I want to be a star.' It's, ‘I'm going to be a star.'"

That said, Popil says that impending national stardom hasn't gone to Steck's head: "Pandora is treating people no differently since she had this opportunity, and honestly it's probably not easy," he says. "She earned it and is enjoying the celebrity of it all. I was just talking to her the other day about her going to the premiere party in L.A., and she said, ‘Kasha, last year even all the big stars like Charo could not get in.' I fell to the floor laughing, because only us drag queens think Charo is a really big star. It was so sweet."

No matter what happens with his stint on "Drag Race," Steck's and Pandora's profiles are on the rise, and he has no intention of slowing down. In addition to the new Geva engagement of "Lipstick Massacre" - which is undergoing rewrites to address some of the issues brought up during the original run, including its length - Steck is partnering with Tilt-a-Whirl DJ Herbert to produce his own original song to perform as Pandora. "It's something that's uniquely mine," he says. "I want to make what I do uniquely mine."

Beyond that, Pandora's future is wide open - and possibly not taking place in Rochester. "I don't know if I'm staying in Rochester," Steck says. "I've said a few times that I was going to leave and never did. I think it's a great city, because there's so much here; you just have to look for it. It's generally a very open community, very open to the LGBT community. So it's great. I have a lot of great friends here, and there are things I've been able to do here that I may not have been able to do in another city. But I do know that some of the things I want, I may have to leave - the opportunities aren't here."

As for what those opportunities are, Steck says that he'd like to tour with "Lipstick Massacre," to perform it in New York or Los Angeles and "take the play as far as it can go." And ultimately, he would like to have his own TV show. "That's the ultimate goal that I've wanted my whole life. I got it," he says, referring to his public-access show, "but you have to be very specific about what you want when you put it out there. I have to dream bigger. That's what Oprah always says; dream bigger."

It's worked so far. Not much more than a year ago, Steck was prepared to give up on his drag career altogether. Now he's a popular host, a playwright, and within a week, he'll be on national television. "If anything, this year has proven to me that if you want something, you've got to go and get it," he says. "You've got to put it out in the universe. I focused on it, said this is what I want, and I got it. And I'm really about that; if you have a dream you have to work to make it happen."

"I'm open to whatever the universe throws at me in 2010," Steck says.

Where to catch Pandora Boxx

"RuPaul's Drag Race" Season 2 premieres Monday, February 1, at 9 p.m. on Logo (Channel 438 on Time Warner Cable). Episodes will also be re-broadcast on VH1 (Channel 29), although the schedule has yet to be determined. Tilt (444 Central Ave, 232-8440) will be hosting "Drag Race" viewing parties on Mondays at 9 p.m., with Pandora Boxx hosting, question-and-answer sessions, contests, and more.

Pandora Boxx hosts the weekly Tilt-a-Whirl event at Tilt every Thursday. There are two drag shows per night, the first starting at 11:15 p.m., the second at 12:30 a.m., with DJ Jon Herbert spinning in between. Cover is $2 for 21+, $10 for 18-20.