On November 13, following close to three hours of public comment by more than 60 individual speakers, each allotted up to three minutes to speak – the vast majority of whom vigorously supported the drama students and questioned the process by which decisions were being made in the Sherman school system – and more than two hours of closed session, the board of the Sherman TX Independent School District voted unanimously that the original script and cast of the musical Oklahoma! should be allowed to proceed at the high school.

This follows a week and half in which the school’s administration initially informed parents and then students that no student would be allowed to perform any role where a character’s gender that did not align with the gender the cast member were assigned at birth. While this affected as many as 20 students according to statements at the meeting, the decision was widely interpreted at being focused specifically at Max Hightower, a trans male student who had had been cast as the secondary character of Ali Hakim, a role from which he was now being removed.

That decision, announced on Friday November 4, was followed on Monday, November 7 with a statement that the school was now reviewing the text of Oklahoma!, one of the most popular musicals in US high schools for more than a half-century, for material which was inappropriate for high school performance.

On November 11, late on a Friday afternoon, the school announced that there was an alternate Oklahoma! script that would be performed, one which would be acceptable for all ages. That was in fact a cut-down one-hour version of the musical which was intended for pre-high school performances and audiences with short attention spans. A statement to this website from Concord Theatricals , which licenses Oklahoma! for performance, confirmed that the district had applied for the rights to the alternate version, but did not say that such rights had been granted.

Coming after more than five hours of meeting time that went well past 10 pm, the following resolution was adopted by the school board by unanimous decision: “As the board has not adopted a board policy regarding the casting of students in theater productions or performances, I move that the board direct the superintendent to reinstate the original script of the musical Oklahoma at Sherman High School and cast that was assigned as of November 2, 2023.”

School board president Brand Morgan then went on to read a statement on behalf of the school board as follows, “We want to apologize to our students, parents or community regarding the circumstances that they’ve had to go through to this date. We understand that our decision does not erase the impact this had on our community. But we hope that we will enforce to everyone, particularly our students, we do embrace all of our board goals to including addressing the diverse needs of our students and empowering them for success in diverse and a complex world. The board is committed to uphold its ethical duties to including being continuously guided by what is best for all students in our district.”

The more than five dozen speakers at the meeting ranged in age from high schoolers to grandparents, and included speakers who identified themselves as lifelong Sherman residents, residents who had moved away and returned later in life, students matriculated at Austin College in Sherman, parents and siblings of current students and more. Several speakers identified themselves as gay, queer and trans.

The Austin College students each spoke to their personal experiences, but all shared and reiterated the same concluding statement when it came their turn: “I demand that the school board upholds its self-reported goals V & VI by supporting LGBTQ students. I demand the school board allow Sherman High School to perform ‘Oklahoma!’ and all future shows in its original form with students cast in roles they earn. I demand the board maintains SISD theatre department as a welcoming and inclusive space.”

A number of speakers cited statistics about rates of suicidal ideation and suicide among gay and trans young people and charged the school administration and board with ignoring such concerns. One speaker bluntly asked, regarding the school’s gender policies, “Are you telling me that instead of writing biographies in playbills you would rather be writing obituaries?”  

One Austin College student who spoke at the board meeting, identifying themselves as a trans male, stated that theatre is a safe space but that Sherman itself is not. They went on to say that by standing up at the meeting, “I am risking coming out to my entire homophobic family because this is a hill I will die on.”

This does not, however, mean that all discussion on the matter of future productions and casting is necessarily over. One school board member asked for additional conversation on the matters raised at the meeting, stating, “I would like to request a special called meeting Friday at noon of this week here at the central office boardroom to continue this discussion with the board and with legal counsel.” Board president Morgan said that such discussion would be scheduled within 72 hours.

No announcement has yet been made regarding the performance dates for Oklahoma!, originally scheduled for next month.

The Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little Ladies of River City, Iowa ain’t got nuthin’ on the district administrators and school board of Sherman, Texas.

Don’t remember the Pick-a-Little Ladies? They’re the gossipy gaggle of book banning biddies who take time out of their perpetual puncturing of their neighbors’ foibles to rail against the presence of classic works by Chaucer, Rabelais and (horrors) Balzac in the local library.

The Sherman Independent School District honchos are the hypersensitive monitors of morals who have found shocking sexuality and impermissible profanity in the beloved 1943 classic Oklahoma!, widely acknowledged as a turning point in the development of modern musical theatre.

Oklahoma! has been performed tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times around the world on stages large and small, professional, amateur and academic. It was the most popular musical on high school stages in the 1960s and 70s and the second most popular in the 1980s and 90s, demonstrating that thousands of teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards have found it to be a wholly acceptable, even ideal, show for their students across decades.

One key difference in the two aforementioned groups: the Pick-a-Little Ladies aren’t real, but instead are characters in another beloved musical, The Music Man, created by Meredith Willson to puncture the hypocrisy of small-town, small-minded self-appointed arbiters of what is right and wrong. The Sherman ISD folks are alive and well imposing their ridiculous regulations on what was heretofore an unassailable standard of the American theatrical repertoire.

When we last left the Sherman ISD crew, they had announced that the already-cast high school production of Oklahoma!, slated for performance in December, was being recast, specifically targeting any student who had a role of the opposite gender from their own. This edict came down in order to displace Max Hightower, a trans boy who had been cast in the secondary role of the traveling peddler Ali Hakim. It seems that the Sherman ISD leaders couldn’t countenance a trans boy acting a role in a comical love triangle, so they invented new rules to stigmatize every gay, trans, non-binary, and queer student under their thumbs, even managing to displace some of the straight kids as well.

But one week after their ham-handed actions raised an outcry from local students, parents and, increasingly, the media, the Sherman ISD brain trust announced late Friday afternoon that they had found a solution to this problem of their own creation. Declaring the script and score of Oklahoma! that has delighted generations on stage and film to have been intended for “older audiences,” they patted themselves on the back for moving forward with an alternate Oklahoma!, “a musical that showcases each student’s talents while also being age appropriate, with no concerns over content, stage production/props, and casting. By utilizing a new version that’s age appropriate, sex will not be considered when casting the new production. Students will be able to play any part, regardless of whether the sex of the character aligns with the sex of the student assigned at birth.” 

How did they achieve such a magical transformation of such trash as one of the important musicals in the history of the form? In a move that would have made the Pick-a-Little Ladies proud, they have opted produce the Oklahoma! Youth Edition, a version of the show so cut down that in contrast to the original, which according to the licensing house Concord Theatricals runs more than two hours, the young people of Sherman will be required to only be on stage for an hour. Yes, the Oklahoma! Youth Edition might be more appropriately called Highlights from Oklahoma! (Minus All the Not Very Naughty Bits).

Taking a closer look at the Concord website, one can easily find that this truncated Oklahoma! being produced at a high school wasn’t designed for high schools. The site states, “In this adaptation for pre-high school students, the content has been edited to better suit younger attention spans.” There’s even one character from the show who has entirely disappeared, as the number of male principals has dropped from 6 to 5. Without immediate access to the Youth script, one can surmise that the missing man could well be the ill-natured (and perpetually ostracized) Jud Fry, that fly in the ointment in the otherwise placid settler community.

What’s evident is that in their rush to eradicate anything that goes against their desire to keep Sherman safe only for cisgendered heterosexuals, they have decided to infantilize the entire student body by giving them the opportunity to perform and see not Oklahoma! but Oklahoma!-lite, a skeletal script reworked to take an impressionable pre-teen from song to song without the slightest spectre of sensuality, and to be sure, it’s pretty slight in most Oklahoma! productions to begin with, sublimated into song and dance.

Heaping a dollop of self-congratulation on themselves in yesterday’s statement, the Sherman ISD spin doctors “thank our community for the care and patience they have shown as we have navigated these difficult circumstances.” There was nothing difficult until these folks decided to make it so and they haven’t demonstrated the slightest care for a significant number of their students, least of all Max Hightower, who found love, acceptance and understanding everywhere except from the Sherman ISD leadership.

As for patience, segments of the community shouted that they can say no from the moment the decision came down one week earlier. The outcry forced the cadre that exerts their will over Sherman students to bumble into another decision which only reinforces their fear of high schoolers encountering anything that doesn’t advance the America seen in such sitcoms as Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best. That happens to the be the very same era in which the film of Oklahoma! was a box office hit. 

With a Board of Education meeting looming in Sherman on Monday evening and the board itself thinking it has tied up everything quite neatly, they are likely to learn during public comments that their alarm over a masterpiece of musical theatre and their disdain for children they’re supposed to be building into smart, compassionate adults has fallen flat. They would do well to listen to the wise words of the character of Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!, mildly profane but also utterly humane, who seeks to quell a community conflict with this lyric, which along with the entire script and score won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944, a declaration that all people are created equal, with equal rights:

I’d like to teach you all a little sayin’
And learn the words by heart the way you should
I don’t say I’m no better than anybody else,
But I’ll be damned if I ain’t jist as good!

Update, November 11, 5 pm: In response to questions regarding the situation with Oklahoma! at Sherman High School, the licensing house Concord Theatricals provided the following statement, reproduced in its entirety:

“Equity, diversity, inclusion and freedom of speech are key tenets for Concord Theatricals as champions of authors and artists. We encourage all producing organizations to consider diversity and inclusion in their casting choices. 

Concord Theatricals supports our licensees and all who work on their productions, so long as they adhere to their contractual agreement and do not enact unauthorized content changes.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! is a classic title that has been performed in its entirety thousands of times across the U.S. since it debuted 80 years ago, including in High Schools. Concord Theatricals additionally offers a popular 60-minute Youth Edition designed especially for young performers; we can confirm that Sherman has now applied for this version.”

UPDATE: For the resolution of this situation following a school board meeting, posted on November 14, click here.

Background of lead image photographed at the Museum of Broadway’s Oklahoma! exhibit in New York.