Senator Alex Antic Pitches Play On Margaret Court’s Life
Image: Senator Alex Antic (left) and Margaret Court. Images: Facebook
South Australian Senator Alex Antic, who recently introduced an anti-trans bill in Parliament, wants a play on the life of Margaret Court, known for her anti-LGBTQI statements.
The Senator made a pitch recently to State Theatre Company South Australia after its acclaimed play Sunshine SuperGirl based on the life of tennis legend Evonne Goolagong.
Regarded as one of the greatest female tennis players of all time with seven Grand Slam singles titles, Wiradjuri woman Goolagong is considered the first Indigenous woman to achieve international sporting fame.
Sunshine Super Girl by Yorta Yorta/ Gunaikurnai playwright Andrea James tracks Goolagong’s life from her child hood in Barellan to tennis greatness. The play stars Ella Ferris as Goolagong and has been critically acclaimed, winning rave reviews.
Pastor Margaret Court
Antic felt another Australian tennis player should have been made into a theatre production. “Despite Ms Goolagong being an incredible tennis player, the record of Reverend Margaret Court stands head and shoulders above all others,” Antic wrote in a post on social media.
The Senator published the letter that he had written to State Theatre Company South Australia in September 2023. “I wrote to the State Theatre Company to see whether they would consider a production based on the incredible life of the greatest tennis player of all time Reverend Margaret Court.”
Besides her tennis laurels, Court is known for being a pastor at Pentecostal Victory Life Centre church and for her rabidly anti-LGBTQI views.
Court’s Anti-LGBTQI Views
Court, in 2017, said that tennis was “full of lesbians” and described transgender children as the work of “the devil”. She targeted Australian tennis player Casey Dellacqua and her partner, saying that their baby with two mothers shouldn’t have been ‘deprived of her father’.
Court has previously compared the LGBTQI community to Hitler, homosexuality as an “abominable sexual practice” and had said she would not fly Qantas over the airline’s support of same-sex marriages.
Court’s has stood by her anti-LGBTQI views. Last week, during a sermon she claimed the minds of gay and trans persons had been taken by the devil.
“I hear things every week… somebody’s decided already they’re not a boy anymore, they’re a girl, or somebody says ‘Hey, I’m going into a gay relationship. Healthy young people. Why – because the devil is after the mind,” Court said in her sermon.
Who would they get to portray her? I know there was one in “Battle of the Sexes”, but it was a smaller role, as someone Billie Jean King also had to contend with during her time as a tennis champion. BJK I am acknowledging now, although it was meant to have been a traumatic roller coaster accepting & acknowledging her sexuality. What could a biopic on M. Court do for anyone? Who would want to portray her for a whole length of a 120+ min movie? To highlight the epic struggle, for her to ascend to the height of her hideous religious hateful bull crap bigotry in her post tennis career. She may have played well, but I don’t care to even acknowledge this side of someone. When they have made it their calling to keep overseeing false teachings & general attitudes, regarding alleged facts contained in an ancient text we all should blindly follow & accept every word without rational &,critical questioning.