October 14, 2026 at 10:50am EDT

A Texas school district has cancelled a high school production of Little Shop of Horrors after a teen girl was cast in the role of Seymour, citing a Texas state law restricting drag performances.

According to The Dallas Morning News, Ana Mota, a senior at South Grand Prairie High School in Grand Prairie, was delighted when she got the role of Seymour, the nerdy male lead in the popular musical. Because she had played male roles like Pinocchio and Jack in Into the Woods in the past, Ana didn’t think twice about auditioning.

After hours rehearsing lines and songs and days of tough auditions and call-backs, Ana was offered the role of Seymour and accepted. But a week into rehearsals, the teen was pulled into a meeting with her theater director and told her part would have to be given to a male student due to a 2023 Texas law that banned drag performances.

Soon after, the school board banned the production from moving forward altogether.

“I was upset,” Ana told The Dallas Morning News. “This isn’t drag at all.”

The nonprofit Educational Theatre Association of the International Thespian Society posted a statement about the situation to Instagram, noting in part that it stands with the students and urges Grand Prairie ISD to reconsider its decision. “Theatre education asks students to consider another perspective, imagine a life beyond their own, and take responsibility for something larger than themselves,” it said. “Those are lessons worth teaching. Those are opportunities worth protecting.”

In a statement, Grand Prairie Independent School District defended its decision and said it is working to comply with its own policies and federal and state law, including the anti-drag Texas Senate Bill 12. “In the musical, a romantic relationship develops between the two main characters,” the statement reads. “When District leadership learned of this issue and in consideration of themes in the musical involving an abusive relationship, a decision was made to pull that production and find something more appropriate.”

A federal judge has twice ruled that the Texas drag law, which aims to ban “sexually oriented performances,” is unconstitutional.

According to the newspaper’s reporting, the original script did call for a kiss between Seymour and Audrey, but the school’s adaptation planned to leave the kiss out regardless of who was cast in the two leading roles.

The outlet also reports that similar incidents have occurred in other parts of the state. Sherman ISD called off its production of Oklahoma! in 2023 after a transgender teenage boy was cast in a leading role. The district later reversed its decision after a public outcry. In 2024, Keller ISD canceled a performance of the The Laramie Project, about the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming. The district later backtracked and allowed the production as well.

Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice for the nonprofit National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., told The Dallas Morning News that refusing a student to play a role based on sex could violate Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education.

“You cannot simply deny a student an opportunity because she is a girl,” said Patel. “This is a very clear example of a problematic state law causing confusion.”