Phillip, Amy Hightower receive Defender Award from DLDF
Amy, Phillip and Max Hightower accept The Defender Award at the Dramatists Guild awards night May 6 in New York Phillip and Amy Hightower, parents of transgender Sherman High School senior Max Hightower, were honored along with their son as the 2024 Defenders of the Year recently by the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, an arm of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Max Hightower and his parents made headlines around the world last fall when, after Max was cast in the male lead role of Ali Hakim in SHS’s planned production of Oklahoma!, Sherman ISD Superintendent Tyson Bennett cancelled the production.
Although Bennett acknowledged that the district had no policy preventing trans students from playing roles other than their gender assigned at birth, he was enacting such a policy — but only in this case.
Maybe. A couple of female students had also been cast in male roles, although not as characters as prominent in the story as Max’s Ali Hakim.
