
Community members gathered in the Basile Theatre on a cold Jan. 9 evening to hear IF Theatre’s plans for 2025 — and to see the world premiere of Tori Keenan-Zelt’s “The JonBenét Game.”
IF Theatre announced its 20th anniversary campaign, which includes year-round live theatre productions, new programming and monthly events. This new push to expand outside its annual festival in August aims to renew IF Theatre, a destination for arts and development, increase community engagement and generate new excitement around the 2025 IndyFringe Festival.
“We as a city are proud to support IndyFringe year after year, as well as other arts organizations,” Deputy Mayor Judith Thomas said during the press conference. “We see the value in these organizations like IndyFringe, and we know the broader impact that the arts bring to our city in so many different ways.”
Leading up the 2025 IndyFringe Festival, themed “Daring for 20 years,” IF Theatre hopes to grow their diverse audiences, work with the city to become a “green” theatre, partner with Flanner House Arts for Flanner Fringe Lab and “expand the perception of the word ‘fringe.’”
“Our festival has never been afraid to take a risk. This is a foundational principle since 2005,” a spokesperson for IF Theatre said. “To honor the IndyFringe core principle we will celebrate our history and that spirit of risk taking, of giving voice to the unspoken and inclusion to every voice.”
Kicking off their new mission, IF Theatre hosted American Lives Theatre for the rolling world premiere of Tori Keenan-Zelt’s “The JonBenét Game” in the Basile Theatre. Commissioned by the San Francisco Playhouse, Keenan-Zelt’s play explores true crime and the role of violence, abuse and safety through the lens of JonBenét Ramsey’s unsolved murder.
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“The JonBenét Game” follows 12-year-old best friends Molly (Cass Knowling) and Rae (Molly Bellner), who secretly engage in JonBenét Ramsey roleplay fantasies at sleepovers. Following Molly’s sudden death twenty years later, her 12-year-old daughter, Hazel (Cass Knowling), comes knocking on Rae’s door with questions.
“I learned as a girl to expect to be killed or victimized, and I remember my grandmother and my mother and my aunt taught me how to escape from a trunk and what to do if I were attacked in different situations,” Keenan-Zelt said. “When she (JonBenét) was killed, I was in elementary school, so seeing her face everywhere, and becoming aware of the coverage of that case, it lined up with those questions about how to be a woman, what it means to embrace beauty or reject beauty, how women and girls are controlled by one another and by society.”
“The JonBenét Game” is a challenging play in many ways, and Keenan-Zelt said she hopes audiences wrestle with the questions of what is safe or dangerous, how people get into situations of abuse and how do they survive; how do those attempts at survival become violence themselves?
American Lives Theatre, which was founded in 2020, expressed interest in an early draft of the play and helped Keenan-Zelt develop it over the last year.
“To be able to grow and shape a play in a community that gets excited about taking risks has been a huge gift,” Keenan-Zelt said.
“The JonBenét Game” is onstage at the Basile Theatre now through Jan. 26. The play runs approximately 90 minutes with no intermission. A content advisory is issued for self-harm, sexuality, adult language, depictions of violence and mature themes. For more information, visit indyfringe.org or americanlivestheatre.org.
Contact Arts & Culture Reporter Chloe McGowan at 317-762-7848. Follow her on X @chloe_mcgowanxx.