Assembly Rooms, Glastonbury

The Glastonbury Literary and Dramatic Society ‘gave their first performance of the season on Wednesday afternoon and evening when large and appreciative audiences witnessed the production of a succession of original plays by various well-known authors. In the afternoon was given “Sacrifice,” an Indian play by Rabindranath Tagore, “Paddly Pools’ by Miles Malleson, and John Bostock’s children’s play “The Robin, the Mouse, and the Sausage” … Wednesday afternoon’s programme will be repeated to-night (Thursday) and Saturday afternoon … A full report will appear next week’ (Central Somerset Gazette, Friday 13 September 1918). ‘The Glastonbury Literary and Dramatic Society, which is affiliated to the Glastonbury Festival School (founded August 1914), presented a series of plays commencing on Wednesday afternoon of last week with three distinct performances. The first of these, “Sacrifice” is by an Indian author, Sir Rabindranath Tagore ... A large and representative audience filled the Assembly Rooms, whose appreciation was made in every way manifest by the enthusiastic reception accorded the various plays … To be transplanted from the somewhat prosaic surroundings and modernised atmosphere of the Glastonbury Assembly into the hushed and sacred precincts of an Indian sacrificial temple, to be confronted with the stern and inflexible Brahmin High Priest himself, awe-inspiring in his worship and allegiance to Mother Kali, “the goddess of the endless stream of time,” sitting with uplifted sword on her pedestal, immovable, sphinx-like in her stony silence, to whom numberless victims are sacrificial to appease her lust for blood, which. apparently is never satisfied! This was achieved on Wednesday afternoon of last week, when the curtain rose on the first scene of Rabindranath Tagore’s great Indian (and allegorical) play, “Sacrifice” ... [the plot and the cast's performances are described at length] ... ''The play “Sacrifice,” was especially dedicated by Sir Rabindranath Tagore “to those heroes who bravely stood for peace when human sacrifice was claimed by the goddess of war.” This obviously requires no enlargement, as all will inevitably recognise in the Goddess Kali the present dread war-monster whom we name Armageddon, insatiable in her lust and cruelty. ever demanding sacrifice and fresh sacrifice day by day, until she is cast down by one stronger than herself, and the futility and the wickedness of world destruction is shown to those peoples and nations who have worshipped in her temple ... Though the play is finished, and the curtain down, [Jaising's] glorious act of self sacrifice shines out as a symbol and allegory of noble deals daily enacted out there where, instead of the stony image of Kali the Goddess, the iron clad cannons roar, and the shrieking shells fling forth death and destruction ' (Central Somerset Gazette, Friday 20 September 1918). The Central Somerset Gazette, Friday 27 September 1918, commented further on the production.