‘What Does the World Look Like If We Worship Women?’ Gretchen Wylder Takes the Stage

Featured image: Photo Courtesy of Broadway Photo Video

For Gretchen Wylder —writer and star of 2026 Salem Witch Trial — witchcraft didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. A lesbian actress, tarot reader, and longtime Salem witch, Wylder grew up in an orthodox Christian environment in Missouri before coming out and moving to New York City, where she began performing, go-go dancing, doing burlesque, and eventually reading tarot professionally. Her one-woman show takes that journey—and the much messier story that followed—and turns it into a funny and campy personal piece about queerness, religion, womanhood, and finding power in the identities you were once taught to hide.

Based on a true story, the show follows Wylder through the creation of her queer comedy series These Thems, which was shortlisted for a Peabody nomination before COVID-19, a bad distribution deal, online harassment, and a YouTube takedown left her financially and creatively devastated. From there, she landed in a Christian cottage community outside Salem, eventually buying a cottage there after fabricating an online church called the Church of Mary to satisfy the community’s requirement that residents belong to a church. What starts as a search for stability quickly becomes a phase of surveillance, religious discrimination, and eventually being pushed out of the community.

Let me tell you, it’s a wild story—and Wylder knows exactly how wild it is. The show moves between stand-up styled jokes, storytelling, tarot, historical references to witchcraft and the Salem witch trials, and more painful recollections of being rejected for being a lesbian. The result is intentionally theatrical (in the best way); but the humor never completely lets the audience forget what’s underneath it: a woman reclaiming a part of herself after spending years being told that who she was made her unworthy of belonging.

That tension is what makes the show work. Wylder can go from joking about her “p*ssy-eating pagan” self to discussing the shame she carried from her childhood, then seamlessly turn the theater into something resembling a Church of Mary service. By the end, the show feels less like a straightforward retelling of bad experiences and more like an act of spiritual reclamation. 

She also revealed that she turned the once unreal Church of M.A.R.Y into an actual matriarchal church that inspires community, divine femininity and wisdom, and women leadership. Can I get an “a-women”?! 

When I asked Wylder what she’s learned from creating her own sense of religion, which has attracted more than 4,000 registered members, she says: “I’ve learned that a lot of women are craving a matriarchal spiritual community… it’s not about worshiping one goddess. It’s all about divine feminine knowledge. What does the world look like if we worship women instead of men?”

As for what made her want to share her narrative? It was about processing through unexpected shame and “the juxtaposition of having to hide myself, and also this whole experience while I was going through it—brought up a lot of shame, which was interesting.”

She continues, “I made this show…to help give a voice to that inner child because I was so ashamed. It was such a bad situation. I need to tell the story in a way that makes me feel empowered and like I’m on the other side of it now.”

There’s something resonant about watching a queer woman take a story about being casted out and turn it into a room full of people laughing, listening, and ultimately witnessing her on her own terms. Wylder isn’t pretending the experience didn’t hurt. She’s simply refusing to let that pain have the final word.

Find tickets to her upcoming shows here!