An Evening With JonBenet Ramsey begins with a full-length play, Cowboy's Sweetheart, which imagines the life of a murdered child as it might have evolved had she lived. The play explores the character's psyche and her struggle to deal with the traumatic memories that haunt her. The play is followed by two essays. The first essay considers the JonBenet Ramsey case from a psychoanalytic perspective. The discussion includes a critique of the media and of the two theories that have been developed to solve the crime; a consideration of the psychological and moral issues posed by the case; and an examination of what the case reveals about American society and the American family. The second essay derives from that discussion a new view of the goal of serious theatre: the public airing of tragic secrets about our most intimate institutions--such as the family--and the effect that such representation has on an audience when it is moved to confront the buried emotional conflicts central to our society.