The Texas Tribune, by Ayden Ci
After seeing the musical” Hamilton,” Max Hightower developed a passion for drama. He begged his relatives to watch it again right away when he was only 13 years old. He immediately began listening to the music every day.
Max, who was already an accomplished choir singer, said,” I was like,’ Oh my god, you can sing in a play, that’s insane.
Therefore, when Max, a high school senior, was cast in the Sherman High School generation of” Oklahoma,” he performed his own solo! He gave his all to the creation of a wholly National music about love and statehood.
However, it is currently unknown if Max, a transsexual man, may be cast as the Iranian peddler Ali Hakim. Sherman school officials have essentially cast Max as the result in a very different crisis that is taking place in real life due to an uproar of immediate policy changes regarding the gender of performers and public hand-wringing over the content of the revered American musical. It’s more akin to the” Hairspray” civil rights battle than the love triangle in” Oklahoma”!
Max and a few of his own undergraduate thespians were dismissed by the school after he was demoted from the choir to the supporting role. The play may be delayed and recast, and students may only play roles that matched the sex that was assigned to them at birth, high school administrators told each student one by one.
The area on Friday retracted the gender policy after the first decision received local and national attention. However, the area also declared that the play would now be produced by the school in an “age correct” version.
There are only two iterations of” Oklahoma”! The classic and a “youth” type, billed as an “adaptation for pre-high class students” that has articles “edited to better match younger attention spans,” are accessible from the licensing rights-holding company. The character Max was previously cast to play in that version is now simply referred to as” The Peddler.” The work time of the show is one afternoon, as opposed to the two hours it was in the original.
” I believe it to be disrespectful. I believe it’s also aiming for Max. According to Amy Hightower, Max’s mother,” I believe they chose the variant that would have Max in it the least.”
The controversy surrounding transgender students ‘ involvement in a music is the most recent development in the national discussion of transgender rights, particularly in public schools.
The conflicts, which have taken place in statehouses and school board meeting rooms all over the United States, have primarily been about exposure to athletic equipment and books in classroom libraries. However, Texas lawmakers also prohibited trans children from using hormone therapy and puberty blockers that top health organizations have approved for children earlier this year.
In Texas, decisions by college districts to examine the books offered to students and implement rigid gender policies have garnered national attention, including a brand-new documentary audio about the residential Grapevine school district. The handling of” Oklahoma” by Sherman ISD worries Max’s family! has moved the neighborhood in that direction.
Phillip Hightower, Max’s father, said,” I did n’t want us to be that.” ” I wanted us to demonstrate our ability to maintain a certain level of progress and consider every child’s wants.”
The school committee has not voted on any laws regarding student players ‘ female assigned at birth, and Sherman ISD, which has a student population of about 7,800, did not make any officials available for comment.
Oklahoma was mentioned in one statement from the Sherman college area. ” Maturate adult themes, profane language, and sexual content” were featured. However, the production of the show has long been a mainstay in departments of large school theater. The policy regarding performers ‘ gender would n’t necessarily be applied to future performances, according to that earlier statement.
According to a neighborhood statement released on Friday, Sherman ISD values the richness of our staff and students and is aware that many of its students have found this to be particularly challenging. The situation made it clear that theatrical productions and codes needed to go through a more formal review process. We apologize that this was not now in place, but the District will include a stricter review and approval process going forward.
However, that has n’t done much to placate Max’s parents.
According to Phillip Hightower,” the supervisor and the management are trying to shift the blame.” ” To shift the blame to the theatre division, the chairman, devil, I suppose even the school board that approved this a year and an half before.” Their lack of explanation disgusts me.
eons of imaginative precedent
The Sherman county’s original decision regarding sex in casting decisions, according to LGBTQ+ activists and attorneys, is the first of its kind to interfere with the arts. Theater, in particular, has a long history of reshaping female norms. Shakespeare frequently uses people to play female jobs.
Max has made it clear who he is as a female. In the seventh grade, he revealed his trans identity to his companions, and a year later, his parents did the same. He is treated like any other 12th student, with the exception of some abuse and sometimes misused nouns.
Max was therefore completely taken aback when he was informed they had no more sky in his new position.
Max remarked,” I know it’s Texas, I know where we live, but no my school.” They would n’t pass something like that because they knew how bad that would get because there were so many queer students at Sherman High School, I thought.
Max was not the only trans student involved in the play whose birth female did not correspond to their role. Male stars were in short supply at the college, and many students—trans and transgender alike—had missed the chance to play the roles they desired.
Although similar cases have been reported, the now-abandoned scheme is thought to be the state’s second attempt to limit theater productions based on gender. A contract school in Fort Worth was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for enacting a rule stating that kids could just enroll in singers based on the gender they were given at birth.
The temporary identity scheme of Sherman ISD was referred to as a “very serious and severe example” of discrimination by Brian Klosterboer, an ACLU attorney and chair of the LGBT Law Section at the State Bar of Texas. He compared it to the Fort Worth lawsuit.
However, this Sherman ISD ruling is an illustration of the extraordinary anti-transgender animus that exists both here in Texas and across the nation, according to Klosterboer.
Sherman ISD’s rolled-back plan appeared to be a clear violation of Title IX, the civil rights law that forbids discrimination based on gender, according to Klosterboer and Equality Texas contacts director Johnathan Gooch. The Department of Education published a notice in 2021 explaining that Title IX may be violated by discrimination based on gender personality.
assumptions about the popularity of Texans
Gooch claimed that the Sherman policy does not take into account what some Texans desire from educators. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 75 % of Texasans help LGBTQ+ non-discrimination laws.
Gooch remarked,” I believe there are some misunderstandings about what Texas residents typically want and expect from their school board and society rulers.”
The Hightowers found pity for LGBTQ+ problems in Sherman, a remote city of 46, 000 people located about 70 miles northwest of Dallas, to be sporadic but not impossible. Amy, a Howe resident, believed that Max would benefit more from living in the rapidly expanding city than in more remote areas outside. Phillip believed that the neighborhood may develop into what they required.
The city is more accepting than it seems, according to Valerie Fox, chairman of the neighborhood LGBTQ+ volunteer Grayson Pride, but allyship is kept secret out of concern for public backlash.
Fox said,” If we need to, we can get some money if we get a lot of secret support.” They wo n’t want to appear on a sponsor banner, but they will donate it to us. They do not want anyone to be aware.
Because one of Fox’s children is gay and Fox did n’t see support for LGBTQ+ identities in Sherman, she founded Grayson Pride. Since she founded the volunteer four years ago, she claimed, participation has quadrupled.
The Hightowers have thought about leaving the condition to live with Max’s sisters and where there is less worry about how Max will be treated, but it is not an easy decision.
Phillip remarked,” I do n’t really want to leave this place.” ” I want to alter this.”
Perhaps from some family members, Max’s parents had kept his changeover a secret out of worry and fear. However, after the region eliminated their child’s crucial role, they went to Facebook and made the incident widely known. They claimed that the response has been largely and quickly positive.
We may have gotten in touch so much ago if I had known we had all the resources and support, Amy said.
Grayson Pride and a number of neighborhood members intend to enter the Monday school board meeting for ShermanISD. The meeting’s standard agenda does not include the postponement of the play.
Max claimed that the environment at school has entirely changed since regional broadcaster KXII announced the play’s postponement. He is followed around by individuals, who have disparaged him negatively. His parents excused him from class and decided to spend the rest of the year in a hotel.
Max remarked,” Persons were attempting to follow me to the restroom to see which one I would enter.”
According to Gooch, procedures like the one in Sherman ISD create a hostile environment that encourages more discrimination in addition to violating Title IX. According to a statement from the Trevor Project, 86 % of LGBTQ youth believe that current political discourse has negatively impacted their well-being.
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The Texas Tribune’s original version of this article can be found at https ://www.texastribune .org/2023/11/10 / Texas-trans-student-musical-sherman-oklahoma.
