Tracy Edwards slams musical about her life after cast’s LGBTQ+ fundraising call
Tracy Edwards has hit out at a musical about her life – because cast members tried fundraising for an LGBTQ+ sports group. (Pamela Reith/Getty)
Tracy Edwards has hit out at a musical about her life – because cast members tried fundraising for an LGBTQ+ sports group. (Pamela Reith/Getty)
British sailor Tracy Edwards has criticised a musical about her life after the cast reportedly urged the audience to donate to Pride Sports.
Edwards made history in 1989 by captaining the first all-women crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. She was appointed MBE and named yachtsman of the year.
More recently, she has spoken out against sporting bodies that allow transgender women to compete in women’s sports. Earlier this year, she hit out at Mumbles Yacht Club, where she had been a member, for allowing transgender sailors to use the women’s changing rooms.
Edwards’ story is the basis for Maiden Voyage, a new musical at London’s Southwark Playhouse, but she slammed the show after performers at the curtain call asked the audience members to make donations to the LGBTQ+ sports-inclusion group, The Telegraph reported.
Pride Sports works to “challenge homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in sports” and aims to help LGBTQ+ people have “an enjoyable and rewarding experience within sport”.
Edwards was in the audience on the night and claimed that the fundraising call was a one-off, launched because performers knew she was in the auditorium. “They had not done it before, or on other dates. It was for my benefit,” she said. She labelled those who asked for donations “sheep”, rather than activists.
“The irony of spending 90 minutes singing and dancing in celebration of women fighting for their rights in sport, only to trample all over those rights at the end, is off the scale,” Edwards added.
And in a post on X/Twitter, she wrote: “I will never understand why some young women are so ready to throw away the rights we all worked so hard for.”
The Telegraph said if there were any more fundraising curtain calls, the money would go to benefit Edwards’ charity, which “raises funds for… girls’ educational programmes all over the world”.
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