An Triail

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An Triail ("The Trial") is a play written by the Irish playwright Máiréad Ní Ghráda which starred well known poet and Sean nós singer Caitlín Maude in its first performance in 1964. The play was first broadcast on RTÉ radio in 1965^[1].

The play is written entirely in the Irish language and is on the curriculum for the Leaving Certificate examinations for the period 2006 - 2009.

[edit] Plot summary

The play is set in the west of Ireland during the 1960s and deals with the pregnancy, and subsequent single motherhood, of a young girl. She is shunned by her family after getting pregnant by the local primary school teacher, a married man with a sick wife, and must leave her parish and move to the city. Here she is once again marginalised, first as a pregnant woman and then as a single mother. An encounter with the child's father, where he further rejects her and his child, only serves to make matters worse and the girl takes her own life, as well as that of her child.