Video: How the SpongeBob Musical Inspired Dylan Mulvaney's One-Woman Musical

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with over 3,700 shows. This year, Playbill is in town for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!

Dylan Mulvaney is having a "brat girl summer." That's because she's performing her first ever one-woman musical at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. "I have never been this happy. I feel sexy. I feel like a little bit like, just like limitless. And I think I'm gonna just keep riding that wave," she says. And what a wave has been. The performer, who has become one of the most preeminent trans voices in America, wrote premiered her new one-woman show this summer: Faghag.

See Mulvaney discuss the personal origins of the show in the video above with Playbill's Jeffrey Vizcaíno, including how she was inspired by SpongeBob SquarePants, The Broadway Musical for the show's songs (which were composed by a variety of people such as Ingrid Michaelson and Barlow & Bear).

"People automatically label me as an activist, even though I'm just, like, a trans theatre girl," says Mulvaney, who has a degree in musical theatre. "And I say that in the show. I'll be like, 'No, I'm not an activist. I'm a musical theatre major.' And it's so funny, because when I'm getting written about outside in the world, even about this show, they'll be like, 'Trans activist Dylan Mulvaney' does musical. And I'm like, 'No, that was the whole point of the musical, is to show people that that's not what I am.'"

And more people are about to know that. Faghagearned a rave review from critics (including Playbill's Fringe correspondents), and it has commercial theatre producers Wessex Grove attached to it. So it's very likely that this won't be the end of Faghag.

"I would love to do the West End at some point," says Mulvaney. "And then obviously, I think New York would be really special...I live in [Los Angeles] usually. I want to make LA theatre a thing. It's starting to happen. But I would love to bring this to LA at some point too."