Tony Award winner Alan Cumming, who will perform at Miami’s Knight Concert Hall on Friday, is speaking up for “another individual performing in the area — but against her will.”
He’s the latest celebrity to join PETA in urging the controversial Miami Seaquarium to free Lolita, the park’s lone orca. In a letter to Fernando Eiroa, CEO of the facility’s parent company, he writes that he and Lolita “both hail from the cooler north, and we’re both in our early 50s. However, over the past five decades, I’ve been able to travel the world and pursue my dreams, while she has languished in the smallest, oldest orca tank in the world. I’m writing to ask that you free her.”
Cumming’s work to help Lolita isn’t limited to letter-writing. On Sunday at Sublime Restaurant & Bar in Fort Lauderdale, he’s hosting a benefit for PETA’s captive-animal campaign, which advocates for animals such as Lolita and the orcas stuck at SeaWorld. The campaign received a major boost last month when Ringling Bros. circus announced that it was going out of business because of a lack of demand for captive-animal performances.
