Dubbed Cirrhosis of Liver, Sonia Maybottom is a 32 year old, 6 year veteran in the drag community, a member of the Manic Monday house cast at P Town Bar, and a founder of the Birdcage Players Theater Company.
After two drag performances in 2004, Sonia retired her drag persona due to the climate of the queen community at the time. In 2012, a friend who then worked for Planned Parenthood threw a benefit show, a cause near to Sonia’s heart. This event reignited a spark of creativity, and Sonia Maybottom was born. When she starting working for P Town Bar, she pitched the concept of a drag show, a show that would come to be known as Manic Mondays. The current house cast of for the event includes Blade Matthews, October Obermine, Georgia Bea Cummings, and Sonia herself. You can find them, along with a few guest performers every Monday night at midnight.
The name Sonia was inspired by character who wrote a cookbook of recipes requiring only a toaster, encapsulating the flighty, head-in-the-clouds character that Sonia Maybottom portrays. The persona vs. the person is a concept that strikes home for Sonia. “A lot of people assume that I act like Sonia all the time. There are queens who have a similar personality in drag and out of drag. Sonia is more open with people, and out of drag Michael is a different set of traits to Sonia,” says Ms. Maybottom.
Sonia acknowledges the work of drag idols like Jackie Beat, Varla Jean Merman, and the well-known Sharon Needles and the struggle that these performers faced when people barely knew what drag was. “If it weren’t for people like these queens, we wouldn’t have the community we have in all the regions and areas that drag exists. Ru Paul has done so much with their career, but she is only one drag queen. These queens are iconic in what they did for the community.”
Pittsburgh has certainly come a long way in this respect, featuring a diverse array of performers, with varying levels of experience. To these newer performers, Sonia offers the following advice: you don’t need to spend lots of money to turn a look. When starting out, it isn’t easy to afford luxurious pieces, but with creativity you can make beautiful pieces on a budget.
Sonia is a co-host of Open Stage at Cruze bar on Tuesdays at Midnight, and the founder of Manic Mondays at P Town Bar on Mondays at Midnight, and their theater company, the Birdcage Players, will perform “Queer off Broadway” at Cruze Bar in February.
This article originally appeared on QueerPgh.com. This article is preserved as a part of the Q Archives project. Please consider donating to help preserve Pittsburgh’s Queer history.
