Students in the University of Central Oklahoma’s theater department have raised over $9,000 to produce a queer-themed play after the school’s administration canceled it, citing the state’s new anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion law.

As Playbill reports, UCO juniors Maggie Lawson and Liberty Welch were set to co-direct a production of Zoe Senese-Grossberg’s Boy My Greatness, which would have premiered later this month. The play, set in 1606, centers on a group of young boys who played female characters in William Shakespeare’s productions at the Globe Theatre at a time when women were banned from the stage.

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UCO’s theater department had already approved the production, but Welch told Playbill that on September 2, department head Daisy Nystul informed her that the play would have to be canceled.

According to Welch, Nystul cited Oklahoma’s State Bill 796. The law, enacted in July, bans state funded universities from using tax dollars to “support or require certain activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which it defines as programs that “grant preferential treatment based on one person’s particular race, color, ethnicity, or national origin over another’s.”

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Welch told Playbill that she and Lawson were initially baffled as to how their production of Boy My Greatness violated the law, and they’ve gotten no answers from university leadership.

As arts administrator and writer Howard Sherman notes, while Boy My Greatness depicts same-sex relationships as well as male characters dressed as women, the play does not include modern terms like gay or transgender. Senese-Grossberg does include a casting note advising that “Anyone of any gender can play any role and probably should,” and, according to Playbill, Welch and Lawson cast cisgender male and female as well as nonbinary student actors in their production.

As Sherman notes, S.B. 796 does not explicitly ban depictions of gender diversity. But the law’s language is so broad that public universities run the risk of facing litigation if their programs are interpreted as promoting diversity.

In a press statement provided to both Playbill and local Oklahoma station KFOR, UCO said, “After a review of the requirements outlined in the contract from the national production company with legal counsel, the university’s theatre department decided not to support the local production of the show with university resources at this time.” A UCO spokesperson told KFOR that the university considered both “federal and state laws” in making its decision.

Both Nystul and Senese-Grossberg told Playbill that the university sent the playwright a second contract. Senese-Grossberg said the new contract contained a clause holding her liable for any legal action as well as “a clause about casting and gender,” neither of which was in the original contract. She declined to sign. According to Sherman, the university continued to communicate with Senese-Grossberg about the contract two days after the production was cancelled, which he says suggests UCO may be using the contract negotiations as a cover for other concerns about the play.

UCO General Counsel Kendall Parrish told Playbill that the school was also concerned that the production might violate Title IX, the federal law banning discrimination on the basis of sex in education. In February, the president signed an executive order interpreting the law as protecting cisgender women and girls from policies that promote transgender inclusion.

Welch said that after reading S.B. 796, she and Lawson “inferred” that their gender-blind casting had likely caused the University to cancel the production.

Lawson and Welch have since launched a GoFundMe campaign, which has raised $9,837 — far exceeding their initial goal of $2,000 — to produce the play themselves at Upstage Theater in Edmond, Oklahoma, in late October. According to Playbill, they intend to donate a portion of the proceeds to local queer organizations and are even considering launching their own independent theater organization.

Still, they, along with Senese-Grossberg, remain troubled by UCO’s decision to cancel the production of Boy My Greatness.

“It concerns me about future productions of this play, if schools will use this as precedent to not produce it,” Senese-Grossberg told Playbill. “Laws seem to be built in such a broad way that anything can be censored should the people in power want to. When thinking about it in relation to this show, it feels not just a case of artistic censorship but part of a broader effort to keep trans people out of public life and to erase them from any historical narratives.”

“This story is a little centered around us, because we’re the ones this is happening to,” Lawson said, according to Sherman. “But this goes beyond us because even though we got the money and we’re going to be able to do the show and we’re going to be OK, this is going to keep happening to other artists. I really want to spread the message that it’s important to talk about this, because we’re not the only ones. It’s going to happen for years past us, and if we stop talking about it, that’s when things go missing and history gets replaced.”

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