Edinburgh Fringe Keeps Amanda Knox Show After 9,000 Seek Cancellation
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Aug 7
Edinburgh Fringe Keeps Amanda Knox Show After 9,000 Seek Cancellation
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 7
Summary
More than 9,000 people signed a petition to cancel Amanda Knox’s sold-out Fringe show, but festival director Tony Lankester said the event is “not afraid of controversy” and the decision rests with Knox and the venue.
Stephanie Kercher, sister of murder victim Meredith Kercher, said turning the subject into comedy “normalises and trivialises violence against women,” making the show’s format the core objection.
Knox, 39, said Cartwheel is about motherhood and raising a daughter in an unfair, dangerous world for women, arguing critics have not seen it and that it honors Meredith Kercher’s memory rather than jokes about her death.
Gilded Balloon Teviot backed the performance under the Fringe’s open-access model and freedom-of-expression principles, while a theatre scholar said campaigns based on assumptions about content can undercut serious artistic engagement with tragedy.
Knox and former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted in 2009 over Meredith Kercher’s 2007 murder in Perugia before Italy’s highest court acquitted them in 2015; Rudy Guede was separately convicted and released in 2021.