Philly Fringe 2025: Megan Markham presents Witch with Her Skirt on Fire

Markham comes to Philadelphia from a tour of Fringe stops including Fresno, Orlando, Vancouver, and other cities with festivals that feature new and experimental work and edgy and accessible storytelling. Her months of touring no doubt contribute to the relaxed ease she brings to the intimate stage at Sawubona Creativity Project in East Passyunk, where she’s performing through the final week of this year’s Fringe.

Holding audience attention for a full hour with no props (save the glowing book in the first story), almost no sound design (except a few ocean waves accompanying one story set on the beach), and very minimal lighting design is not a small feat, but Markham easily connects and take the audience through an engaging archetypal journey of maiden, mother and crone stories, told with words, gestures, well-timed pauses, varying facial expressions, and an overall abundance of witchy magick.

The Christians and the pagans

At first, Witch with Her Skirt on Fire reminded me of one of my favorite Dar Williams songs, The Christians and the Pagans. Markham frames her stories from the lens of a grown-up granddaughter trying to explain that witches aren’t evil to her aging devoutly Catholic grandmother. But beyond the similarity of bringing Christian religion and pagan beliefs together in song or story, the similarities between Williams’s song and Markham’s show quickly diverge.

The Christians and the Pagans is a beloved alternative holiday song about shared understanding and humanity, even in families with different beliefs (whenever I hear Robert Drake play it on WXPN’s annual “Night Before Christmas,” it makes me cry). Its refrain proclaims:

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,

Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,

And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said,

Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses.

Reclaiming “witch”

But Markham’s story doesn’t come to any hand-holding or easy conclusions. As she takes us on an imaginative journey about a girl whose hour-glass lungs live outside of her body, a woman with starlight hair, and finally a witch-crone whose body turns to glass, we’re brought into a world where women’s wisdom and earth-based traditions are sacred. Markham, whose gorgeous costume includes a long shiny witchy skirt, black lace top, and punk boots with rainbow threads, gives her archetypal tales a contemporary lens, encouraging us not to accept answers from the pages of a book (especially the Bible), but from our own adventures and learning.

While I’m sure that Markham began dreaming of and writing these stories long before the last Presidential election, her show is timely and urgent as our freedom of religion and bodily autonomy for women and trans folks are threatened by Christian nationalists at the highest levels of our government.

Hanging in the air as Markham reclaims the word “witch” is our collective memory of what has happened to women through history who challenge power structures and insist that wisdom comes from the earth.

Through stellar storytelling, Witch with Her Skirt on Fire is an inspiring hour of fun and magic, grief and hope—encouragement to stay strong during these dark times.