WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?

It’s a comedy about the witch hunts. That’s right. 

This “Monty Python Meets The Crucible” is a fast-paced, four-person comedy that asks the question: What if real witches dropped in on the witch hunts? 


Set in the 1600s in the town of Newtown, the village’s chapter of The Pricks of Puritanical Piety Guild and Social Club are setting record numbers of convictions. Townswoman Obediently Snead ends up in the hot seat when she refuses the head witch hunter John Thomas’s offer of marriage. Fortunately, the ghost of Obediently Snead’s ancestor is hanging around, and she knows just who to call: The real witches. Summoned through time and space, Mildred, Agnes and Suds arrive to even the odds and show injustice a thing or two. 


Born in New England where the American witch hunts began, raised on Off-Off Broadway in New York City, and now making its Edinburgh debut, Witches is a reminder of our shared history and the consequences of pseudoscience and mass hysteria. ‘In the end,’ says playwright Kelly F. Burr, ‘it’s up to us to look out for each other, whether we’re supernatural or not.’ But why comedy? ‘Because if they’re laughing, they’re listening.’

THE HISTORY Of THIS SHOW

This show is the culmination of many incarnations, formats, casts, and creative teams. A lot of people believe in this feisty little show, and it really took a village.

Witches premiered in 2025 in New York City at The Rat before its Fringe Festival premiere in The Scranton Fringe Festival where it played to sold out houses. It returned to NYC as part of the Off-Off Broadway FRIGID New York’s Days of the Dead Festival, and in 2026, it played at The Tank (OOB) as part of their new work developmental program. It is currently showing monthly at Under St. Marks Theatre (OOB) in NYC for its Edinburgh Fringe previews. 

A word from the PLAYWRIGHT

How dare I, right? I conceptualized Witches when I discovered my ancestor was burned at the stake for witchcraft, in spite of no evidence or anyone willing to testify against her. I hated that her entire life was washed away and she’d only ever be known as someone who died in the witch hunts. I wanted to tell her story, and the story of everyone else, but in a way that a modern audience could digest, relate to, and maybe even learn from. (Ghost Janet is based on my ancestor, Janet Douglas and my grandmother Lois through her line.)

So, comedy. Like the Shakespearean fool, inspired by irreverently poignant writers like Monty Python and Taika Waititi, my philosophy as a writer is: “If they’re laughing, they’re listening.”

Most of the accusations you hear in the play are from actual legal records of witch trials: “slamming a church door,” “vomiting up knives and scissors,” “having a strange look about her.”‍ ‍Witch-pricking was real, and witch hunters were paid for this service. Blunt and retractable prickers have been found, by the way. (nationalarchives.gov.uk)

This is a story to remind us that the odds were never in our favor. We’ve experienced so much injustice and power imbalances all throughout history. We’ve gotten through them by rescuing each other and being brave enough to do the right thing when the time comes. The witch hunts ended when the people in power began to push back against what they knew to be wrong. Judges stopped ruling in favor of the madness and hysteria, and that finally led to witch hunting being outlawed. 

There is always hope, even when it’s really hard to see.  

- Kelly

THE WITCHES UNIVERSE

Okay, wait. Before you come for us for making light of such a serious subject, the events of this show don’t take place in our universe. Our universe is cruel, harsh, and unfair. Atrocities take place with no repercussions. Suffering goes ignored. 

No, the Witches universe isn’t that. There are many similarities to ours, but in the Witches universe, fairness is law. Like gravity, or the rule of three celebrity deaths for us. We brought out the Witches universe as a place to feel safe and hopeful in times of chaos and uncertainty. 

… what? 

Imagine there are infinite universes. (Or so goes the theory.) Infinite. It’s hard to even imagine that kind of variety. That means you exist (and don’t exist) as every single possibility and impossibility. You are a table lamp in a particular subsection of universes.

So it’s not that radical to believe that in at least one of those universes, what we know as fantasy and reality coexist. It looks like our universe, it smells like our universe, but because of a few tiny cosmic plot twists, magic is real. Fictional characters are real. That’s the Witches universe. 

In one of the striking similarities to our universe, they also deal with prejudice and ignorance. There are those who refuse to accept anything that’s different from themselves. Unfortunately, this is not one of universes where they’ve learned to peacefully coexist. (That wouldn’t make much of a story.) They get hostile and violent out of fear. 

So why don’t the magicals just zap ‘em? Again, not much of a story.

In order to set some narrative guardrails for this whole thing, the answer is that there just isn’t enough magic in this universe to overcome that much hate. (Keep scrolling through universes though, I’m sure you’ll find one.) 

Magical beings have to stay on guard, always careful of how they move through their world. A faction of them organized themselves into an operation that seeks out and rescues the innocent. They’re connected through the vortex, an invisible superhighway that exists through time and space like a magical exoskeleton. One minute they’re on assignment to sneak folks out of jail in Salem, the next they’re at a rave with Joan of Arc. 

When they rescue someone, they have to cover their tracks. This is where they get a little creative. Maybe it’s a mind eraser spell, maybe it’s creative storytelling to the writer of the history textbooks, or maybe it’s as simple as slipping someone a twenty. They leave no trace. But rest assured, the victims you’ve read about, those who’ve suffered horribly, they’re safely living out their lives under the Witches Protection Program over here in the Witches universe.

Because in this universe, fairness is a universal right.

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