Date of Submission

Spring 2021

Academic Program

Theater

Project Advisor 1

Jonathan Rosenberg

Project Advisor 2

Lynn Hawley

Abstract/Artist's Statement

In 1996, six-year-old JonBenèt Ramsey was found strangled to death by a garrot in her family’s Tudor-style mansion. Though suspicion followed the family for years, a perpetrator was never charged. After years of developing DNA sequencing, advanced crime technology, and the relentless court of public opinion that is social media, one might assume that a crime like this could never be covered up in modern day. However in 2020, Peppa Pig was pronounced dead under similarly suspicious circumstances. Her family was exonerated by the Scotland Yard, and yet their story is riddled with inconsistencies. For my senior project, I wrote a play to advocate for the voiceless, and shine a light on the predatory nature of child stardom, and the adultification that happens within pageantry and television. Together with my senior project partner Tim Halvorsen, we were able to create a film version of this play, and explore the dynamics of a family whose cartoon joy has been broadcast to many, but whose traumatic past remains under wraps.

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Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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