Morning Sacrifice (1942) by Dymphna Cusack (1902-1981) premiered in Perth at the Repertory Theatre in 1942. It was Cusack's second play written while she was teaching at Sydney Girl's High School. It was a protest against the problems she saw in the education system. Cusack wrote Morning Sacrifice after her own victimisation in the late 1930s by the New South Wales Department of Education. In her teaching career, from 1925 to 1944, Cusack faced a system that had hardly changed since the turn of the century. Most female students left school to begin work or undertake home duties as soon as they turned 14. State secondary schools like Easthaven Girls High, the setting for Morning Sacrifice, catered for the education of a minority aspiring to the professions and adopted the strictly enforced moral code of private church schools. (In the play's opening scene and as the final curtain falls, student voices are heard off stage singing the hymn Morning Sacrifice, which had been adopted as the school song.) Education officials could remove students, or teachers, for the slightest moral infraction and school life was taken up with Latin drills, rote learning and cramming for a series of external tests.
Cusack condemned this system and summed up her 20-year teaching career as a terrible waste. 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 realizing 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 staffroom 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.
It comes down to Easthaven's youngest staff member to break the deadlock. This is University Medal winner, Sheila Ray, a young teacher described by Woods as “our torchbearer,” who obviously symbolises the future's best hope. But when Ray decides to defend Grey, Kingsbury's full wrath descends on her head. By Thursday, the last day of term and the play's end, Grey has been given a reprieve. While she can stay on at the school to finish her final year, this official pardon has come at a terrible cost. Kingsbury has put so much psychological pressure on Ray for daring to defend the student that the young teacher has committed suicide, throwing herself under a bus. Carwithen is about to be fired and Woods, who cannot take the stress any more, suddenly decides to retire. The action alternates between comedy and horror as the teachers (all women) battle tooth and nail for the good of the pupils and the reputation of the school. Morning Sacrifice won the Theatre Council of Western Australia Drama Festival's Prize in 1942. It was performed by a number of companies in the Little Theatre movement in the 1940s and 1950s. The first professional performance of Morning Sacrifice was in 1986 produced by Griffin Theatre Company at the Stables in Sydney. It has since held a place in the repertoire.