- Fairlight is a brand-new electropop musical about queer invisibility in tennis.
- Takes place at the oldest lawn tennis club – Edgbaston Archery & Lawn Tennis Society on Saturday 30 August.
- Fairlight retells the origin story of lawn tennis as an opposites-attract queer love story through music, storytelling and performance.
- Tickets via: https://fairlightmusical.co.uk/
Fairlight is a brand-new electropop musical about queer invisibility in tennis, which takes place on a tennis court with live tennis playing. Performed at the oldest lawn tennis club in the world – Edgbaston Archery & Lawn Tennis Society – on Saturday 30 August, expect a new musical which explores why sport remains a place where many people struggle to be their authentic selves.
Fairlight retells the origin story of lawn tennis as an opposites-attract queer love story from the minds of Alexandra Taylor and Michael Wolters. The musical pays homage to Fairlight, the house in Edgbaston, Birmingham where Augurio Perera lived and where Harry Gem and he invented lawn tennis in the 1860s. Their relationship – a blend of friendship and potential romantic speculation – forms a pivotal narrative thread in the musical, connecting the origins of tennis to themes of queer representation.
Alexandra Taylor, co-artistic director and librettist said: “There is no historical evidence that Harry Gem and Augurio Perera were anything more than friends, but by depicting their relationship as a gay love story we’ve been able to shine a spotlight on the absence of gay male professionals in the game they invented, and the unknown number of queer stories that have gone undocumented, and are therefore lost forever.”
With music inspired by the sounds of the Fairlight CMI, the world’s first commercially available sampler, the songs are interwoven with accounts of Victorian prosecutions of gay men, demonstrations of the rules of lawn tennis and interviews with current LGBT+ tennis professionals.
The Fairlight CMI, a revolutionary synthesiser from the 1980s, reshaped pop music by allowing composers to sample, layer, and create entirely new sounds. Fairlight brings the energy and precision of tennis to life through music.
Michael Wolters, composer and co-artistic director says: “The Fairlight CMI came with a bunch of sample discs that were used by artists like Kate Bush, the Pet Shop Boys and a whole load of 80s pop bands. Those sounds are instantly recognisable and contributed massively to what we think 80s music sounds like.”
Until December 2024 there had never been an out gay male professional tennis player. Previously to that, only two male players had come out, and both only after retirement. Fairlight includes interviews with current LGBTQ+ tennis professionals including Brian Vahaly, president of the US Tennis Association, Ian Pearson-Brown, founder of campaign organisation Pride in Tennis, Gigi Fernandez, former world number one, and Lucy Shuker, Wimbledon finalist and the UK’s number one female wheelchair tennis player.
Gigi Fernandez said: “I think it’s very important to have these types of projects, that help people understand the struggles of the previous generations, so that we don’t have to repeat them going forward.”
Lucy Shuker said: “I think it’s really important to have conversations, and to make people feel comfortable to have these conversations. I embrace being my true self, I can just be me, and by being me, I play the best tennis.”
Very much a Birmingham story, Fairlight has been developed over two years, with an initial work-in-progress sharing taking place in 2024. Fairlight will be performed at 6pm on Saturday 30 August at Edgbaston Archery & Lawn Tennis Society. Tickets are offered on a ‘pay what you can’ basis, with three options – mats on grass, chairs or standing via https://fairlightmusical.co.uk/
Fairlight has been supported by: Arts Council England; Birmingham City University; Royal Birmingham Conservatoire; Edgbaston Archery & Lawn Tennis Society; LTA; Pride in Tennis; Botanical Gardens; The Hinrichsen Foundation; The John Feeney Charitable Trust; The Grimmitt Trust; The Marchus Trust; The Vaughan Williams Foundation; Warwickshire Tennis.