100 Women We Love 2014

From professors, to musicians, to activists, we present to you 2014’s 100 Women We Love.

Gretchen Wylder

″Musical theatre is gay. I mean, it´s a really, really gay medium, right? And that´s why I love it,″ declares Gretchen Wylder. An actor-singer-dancer-comedian, Wylder moved to New York City in 2010 from Chicago, and in that short time has made a splash on the off-Broadway scene. Most recently, she played a principal role in the musical Til Divorce Do Us Part, which is nominated for a 2014 Drama Desk Award; she also originated the role of Wendy in last summer´s Lesbian Love Octagon. Wylder has an impressive list of projects in the works: her first international tour with a new musical comedy, a one-woman cabaret, and her first starring role in an indie feature film. In her first year in NYC, she competed in the Miss Lez Pageant, which remains one of the highlights of her experiences on the East Coast. Even with her personal success, Wylder realizes lesbian actors still have a ways to go. ″More actors are coming out, but the stigma surrounding queer actors has a strong hold,″ she says. ″The more of us who are out from the very beginning, the more we each take part in chipping away at those stigmas, and making the entertainment industry a more LGBTQ-friendly environment.″ -KL


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