Amanda Knox's sold-out Fringe comedy 'Cartwheel' draws family outrage and 9,000-signature petition

The show and its title

Amanda Knox's comedy monologue "Cartwheel" opened at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on 7 August and runs for 11 consecutive nights at the Gilded Balloon Teviot venue through 17 August. All performances are sold out. The title references a story that Knox did cartwheels in a police station after her flatmate Meredith Kercher was killed in Perugia on 1 November 2007. Knox, now 39 and living in Seattle with her husband and two children, says the show is about motherhood and raising a daughter in a world that is unfair and dangerous for women, and about the cost of telling a child the truth about that world. She told the BBC she is "not the first person to use comedy to talk about traumatic experiences."

Family opposition and petition

Stephanie Kercher, Meredith's sister, has called for the show to be cancelled, telling BBC Breakfast it "normalises and trivialises violence against women and Meredith in particular." She described the family's pain as immense and persistent for twenty years, and asked Knox to imagine if the situation were reversed. Stephanie Kercher also called on Andy Burnham, described by Italian sources as a Labour political figure, to investigate and intervene. A petition launched by a friend of Meredith Kercher has grown steadily through 7 August: from more than 4,500 signatures reported at 11:23 UTC, past 6,000 at 13:39, to 7,700 at 14:35, and over 9,000 by 18:54. One source, Adnkronos, reported nearly 5,000 at 15:53, a figure inconsistent with the upward trend across other outlets.

Knox's defence

Knox has defended the show in interviews with Sky News and the BBC, and in an Instagram post. She said the petition contains "many false assumptions and completely mischaracterises the show" and that neither the petition's author nor any signatory had seen "Cartwheel."

Cartwheel honours Meredith Kercher's memory and calls out the violence that was done to her and to me.

Knox told The Telegraph earlier in August that she believed Meredith would "appreciate the show because it grapples with what it means to be a young woman, and it is honest," and would have found it "funny." Stephanie Kercher rejected that claim, saying Meredith "absolutely wouldn't find these topics of any comedy value."

Sollecito and the festival's response

Raffaele Sollecito, Knox's then-boyfriend who was also convicted and later acquitted, said he had not seen the show and could not judge its content.

I can however say that, the way it has been presented and promoted, it leaves me perplexed that a tragedy is used as an element of attraction for a comedy show.

Tony Lankester, director of the Fringe Society, told BBC Radio Scotland that the festival was "not afraid of controversy" and that the decision to proceed lay with Knox and the venue. The Gilded Balloon Teviot said the Fringe is an open-access festival committed to freedom of expression within the law, and that audiences can make informed choices.

Legal background

Knox and Sollecito were convicted in 2009 of the murder and sexual assault of Kercher, a British exchange student living in Perugia, where all three were studying at the time. Rudy Guede was convicted separately of the murder. After years of legal battles, Italy's highest court acquitted Knox and Sollecito in 2015. Knox spent nearly four years in prison before returning to the United States.