Interview: Dylan MarcAurele, ‘Pop Off, Michelangelo!’

Ahead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024, we’re chatting with a range of creatives who will be heading to the city over August to find out more about their shows. Today we’re chatting with writer Dylan MarcAurele about his new musical comedy, Pop Off, Michelangelo!

Can you tell us a bit about you and your career so far?

I'm a New York based writer who loves pop culture and queer comedy. I started on the music side, majoring in music at Harvard and writing the score for two of the yearly Hasty Pudding drag shows. Then, after graduating, I wrote the score for a historical comedy called LEWIS LOVES CLARK (which recently won the 2023 Richard Rodgers Award). When the pandemic hit, I was watching a lot of Real Housewives, and I'd been wanting to try my hand at writing book and lyrics for something fun... so I started an Instagram account of Bravo-inspired original songs called @RHONYmusical which gained 28,000 followers and eventually led to a stage musical. After that, I wrote and self-produced a musical parody of the horror movie M3GAN. Now, POP OFF, MICHELANGELO! will be my first non-parody.

What is your show about?

POP OFF, MICHELANGELO! is the world premiere musical comedy about besties-turned-bitter rivals Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. After realizing they're both gay, the two childhood friends attempt to earn divine forgiveness by becoming the greatest religious artists of all time. Can Michelangelo gaslight, gatekeep, and girlboss his way to the Vatican? Will Leonardo shut up about his helicopter? With an electropop original score as infectious as the bubonic plague, and a script that has not been remotely fact-checked, this brand new Renaissance adventure is both hilarious and unhinged.

What was the inspiration for POP OFF, MICHELANGELO! and what’s the development process been to get to this stage?

I had always wanted to go to Italy, and in 2022, my husband and I went there for a week for our honeymoon. We saw the David sculpture, and our tour guide told us all about how tortured Michelangelo was—gay, deeply religious, self-disciplined to an extreme, likely celibate his entire life—in comparison to his artistic rival, Leonardo Da Vinci—also gay, but who lived more freely, wore pink tights, wrote backwards, had ADHD, etc. Anyway, then I finally saw Wicked for the first time (a bootleg that changed casts every 90 seconds) and thought, what if these two guys were once BFFs. I took the outline to the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals in January of this year and wound up with a show.

What made you want to take POP OFF, MICHELANGELO! to the Fringe?

This is the world premiere of the show and the first time audiences anywhere will get to see it. The fringe audience is so welcoming to new work and people are so excited to see undiscovered talent for the first time so it feels like the perfect place to share it. Plus it's such a fringey show with camp comedy, fun bops, queer culture, dancing, and dad jokes, we can't think of a better setting for it. 

Apart from seeing POP OFF, MICHELANGELO!, what’s your top tip for anybody heading for Edinburgh this summer?

Go with your instincts and don't worry too much about trying to have the perfect fringe schedule. Take a chance on things you might not see regularly, you never know what will surprise you. Also, stay hydrated! It's hot, everything is always uphill all the time! Water is your friend. 

Why should people book POP OFF, MICHELANGELO!?

People should see POM! if they want to have an entertaining time where they will laugh their butts off and leave with a few new favorite songs stuck in their head. 

When and where can people see POP OFF, MICHELANGELO!?

POP OFF, MICHELANGELO! is playing at Gilded Balloon - Patter Hoose at 18:30 everyday of the fringe (except Aug 12)!