Video: How the SpongeBob musical inspired Dylan Mulvaney to create his one-woman musical

Playbill becomes fringe theatre

Video: How the SpongeBob Musical inspired by Dylan Mulvaney’s one-woman musical

She has just finished her triumphant performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but hopes to expand her show.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world with over 3,700 shows. This year Playbill is in town for the festival and we’re taking you along. Follow as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, also known as our real Brigadier General!

Dylan Mulvaney is having a “summer like a brat girl.” That’s because she’s performing her first one-woman musical at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. “I’ve never been happier. I feel sexy. I feel a little bit like I have no limits. And I think I’m just going to keep riding that wave,” she says. And what a wave it’s been. The artist, who has become one of the most prominent trans voices in America, wrote of the premiere of her new one-woman show this summer: Faghag.

In the video above, Mulvaney talks to Playbill’s Jeffrey Vizcaíno about the personal origins of the show and how it was inspired by SpongeBob SquarePants, the Broadway musical for the show’s songs (composed by various people including Ingrid Michaelson and Barlow & Bear).

“People automatically label me as an activist, even though I’m just, like, a transgender theater girl,” says Mulvaney, who has a degree in musical theater. “And I say that on the show. I’ll say, ‘No, I’m not an activist. I’m studying musical theater.’ And it’s so funny, because when I’m written about out in the world, even on this show, they say, ‘Transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney’ does musicals. And I say, ‘No, that was the whole point of the musical, to show people that I’m not that.'”

And soon even more people will find out about it. Faghagreceived rave reviews from critics (including Playbill’s Fringe correspondents) and has commercial theatre producers from Wessex Grove involved, so it’s very likely that this is not the end of Faghag.

“I would love to do the West End at some point,” says Mulvaney. “And then of course I think New York would be very special… I live in [Los Angeles] normally. I want to make theater in LA special. That’s just starting. But I would like to bring it to LA at some point.”