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.

Phillip Hightower, angry that the superintendent and the school district had targeted his son for discrimination, spread the word about what had happened, contacting local media outlets. The story spread like wildfire, and community members, led by Phillip, crowded into the next SISD board meeting to demand justice for Max and his Oklahoma! castmates. The board responded by initially overturning Bennett’s directive and ordering that the production go ahead as originally scheduled, albeit a month or more later than originally planned. The SISD board members eventually suspended Bennett with pay as an investigation continued into the situation and ultimately, in a May 1 vote, approved a “voluntary separation” between the district and Bennett.

The Dramatists Guild created the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund “to advocate, educate and provide aid to indigent writers and artists who cannot defend themselves,” according to the organization’s website. Each year the DLDF presents The Defender Award “in recognition of an individual, group or organization’s efforts in support of free expression in the dramatic arts.” The 2023 Defender Award went to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Books Unbanned Initiative and The Friends Of George’s Theatre Company.

This year’s awards ceremony was held Monday, May 6, in New York City, and Phillip Hightower told Dallas Voice that he, his wife and their son attended, along with Phillip’s mother and the SHS drama teacher who has supported Max throughout, and the teacher’s wife.

The evening, Phillip said, “was amazing!” He said DLDF representatives were “very sweet and welcoming, as was everyone. We sat shoulder-to-shoulder with and in awe of the amazingly talented playwrights that were there. There was even a Pulitzer Prize winner who got an award that night.”

Phillip said that he, Amy and Max each had a chance to speak as they accepted the award, and “We got a standing ovation pretty much from the time they announced it until we walked off the stage. It was incredible, to say the least.

“Also, I brought my mother and the theater teacher and his wife to the ceremony,” Phillip said. “When I mentioned him in the speech, the room demanded he stand and be honored.  It was nothing short of beautiful.”

Max Hightower graduates from Sherman High School on Friday night,  May 24.

— Tammye Nash