Beyond books: Witch with Her Skirt on Fire brings a universe of story, a guest Fringe review by Fawnda Mithrush

Witch With Her Skirt on Fire (Stage 28, Roots on Whyte)

By Fawnda Mithrush

An engaging storyteller from Orlando, Florida, Megan Markham is making her Edmonton Fringe debut with a series of tales that magically weave their way through time, space, and myriad incarnations of women as witches.

It starts with a library at the centre of the universe, cared for by librarians with a penchant for learning. It provides a cautionary lens to inform the rest of the show: Be careful of what appears in books.

Her subsequent stories are full of rich imagery and metaphor—a girl with hair of starlight, a clockmaker who chases fire, a child’s lungs as an hourglass, an ageless statue planted in sand—it’s a visceral and poetic world that Markham shapes for her grandmother, a Catholic who asks Megan for stories so she can come to understand witches better. The arc covers phases of the maiden, mother, and crone (as any good witch would ensure), and Markham’s delivery is confident and compelling.

As she circles back to the beginning and to her grandmother’s query, Markham recalls finding her own agency through storytelling, and that’s far more valuable than what any book could teach.