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Morning Sacrifice

7/10/1958

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By Dymphna Cusack
Directed by Alex Henderson

Season: 7 - 9 October 1958

Much of the play's material was drawn from Cusack's school experiences.  Cusack felt that the pressure on young people to conform to a standard type stifled individuality and prevented students from realising their potential. The play has a cast of 9 women and is set in the staff room of a girl's high school during the Second World War. The play opens on Monday, August 20, 1938, three days before the end of term. Pressure is mounting in the Easthaven Girls High School staff room as exam marking deadlines loom and the school inspectors arrive, to the surprise and dismay of all except Easthaven's deputy head, Miss Portia Kingsbury. The central focus of the play is an increasingly bitter struggle between the teachers over the fate of Mary Grey (who never makes an appearance), a senior student at the school accused of immoral behaviour. Grey was caught kissing a boy at a school dance. Kingsbury, who is magnifying the affair for her own ends, wants to shore up her authority over Easthaven's seven teachers and Woods, the school's titular head. Grey has already been publicly stripped of her prefect's badge at a school assembly the previous Friday. She now faces expulsion, a punishment that will end her hopes of winning a bursary (a scholarship), her only means of attending university to study medicine, and dash her chances of any sort of career. A split between the teachers emerges and it becomes clear that the issue is not just Mary Grey, and her future, but whether the school authorities will tolerate any attempt to change the rigid atmosphere or the old teaching methods at the Easthaven Girls. Three teachers, Carwithen, Macneil and Sole, are, to a greater or lesser degree, critical of the established order and speak out in defence of Grey. Hammond, Pearl and Bates line up behind Kingsbury, who has already cowed Woods into submission.

Cast:
Miss Portia Kingsbury - Norma Muschamp
Miss Charlotte Bates - Mai Willers
Miss Margaret Sole - Noeline Calvert
Miss Sheila Ray - Pamela Muir
Miss Rose Hammond - Taura Henderson
Mrs MacNeil - Marion Edwards
Miss Dora Pearl - Sandra Sutton
Miss Gwyn Carwithen - Irvine Lindsay
Miss Woods - Alison Alston 
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