THE TRIALS Comes to Tron Theatre Company
Directed by Joanna Bowman, this play presents a glimpse into a future when the world has been irreparably damaged.
By: Stephi Wild Feb. 10, 2026
Tron Theatre Company will present the climate emergency play The Trials, written by award winning writer, Dawn King. Directed by Joanna Bowman, this play presents a glimpse into a future when the world has been irreparably damaged, and the next generation are angry and wanting justice. Performances run 6 – 14 March 2026.
The Trials is set in the not-too-distant future, a time where the air has become unbreathable, temperatures continue to rise and nobody has seen snow for a very, very long time. Twelve angry teenagers have been called as the jury in the ongoing trials against the ones believed to have caused the crisis. They are listening to the evidence (or the excuses) of the three adults on trial, played by Brian Ferguson, Maryam Hamidi and Pauline Goldsmith, and deciding if they are guilty of contributing to the catastrophic damage inflicted on the world they are living in. The teenagers believe the older generation knew what was happening, said all the right things, but did nothing about it, and now they, the next generation, are paying the devastating price. The question is can the teenagers deliver justice for what they believe is the adult’s recklessness or are they just looking to serve revenge?
The jury is made up of a cast of twelve young actors from performance groups across Glasgow alongside three professional actors playing the roles of the defendants in the dock. But don’t be mistaken, this is no youth theatre performance or children’s show. This is a main stage professional production. One that is flipping the narrative and platforming young people’s voices to tell this urgent story and confronting the reality of the future hurtling towards us.
The Trials, written in 2022 and a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, is inventively theatrical, revolutionary, confronting and keenly funny. It challenges us to imagine the ways we all might be held accountable for how we are choosing to live our lives in the here and now. Could we be doing better?
The cast is made up of an incredibly exciting mix of professional actors and a non-professional teenage cast. The professional cast portraying the defendants are theatre, film and TV actor Brian Ferguson whose most recent TV work includes Rebus (BBC), The Ipcress File (ITV), Dept. Q (Netflix), playing Defendant One. Defendant Two is played by actor and writer Maryam Hamidi whose TV work includes Annika 2 (Black Camel), Princess Mirror-Belle (CBBC), River City (BBC Scotland) and theatre work, Sophia (Pitlochry Festival Theatre), Move – Gluassad (Disaster Plan) and Nora – A Doll’s House (Citizens Theatre). Defendant Three is played by actor, writer and director Pauline Goldsmith whose recent theatre work includes Muster Station Leith (Grid Iron), Bold Girls (Cumbernauld Theatre), Interiors (Vanishing Point) and Hang (Tron Theatre). They are being put on trial by an astonishing young cast played by Teddy Burns, Alec Dolinsky-Fraser, Hollie Hart, Tamer Hayou, Lizzie MacKenzie, Victoria Mamvuto, Calum Morrison, Elizabeth Poet, ?na Reid, Poppy Simpson, Mary Tompkins and Oskar Waring.
Director Joanna Bowman says of the piece: ‘Directing The Trials is an exciting prospect. In a future world destroyed by the climate crisis, the play demands we hand the Tron’s mainstage over to a group of teenagers to consider how we, the adults, might be held to account (…or not) for the choices we are making today. Dawn King’s provocation and invitation to make work with both teenage and adult actors feels like a real chance to experience what theatre is best at: asking strangers to sit next to one another in the dark and consider the ways we want to live together. The courage, compassion, and talent bursting out of the rehearsal room from the young company is hugely inspiring and moving. Told with love and humour, with a real emphasis on theatricality, The Trials is an essential play for 2026. It is a play full of life and imagination, brought to life with Glasgow’s young people and a creative team made up of some of Glasgow’s finest theatre artists. To be staging it at the Tron, a theatre which makes work to thrill, provoke, and entertain Glasgow’s audiences, is a joy. We cannot wait to share it with you.’
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