Killing of a Gentleman Defender

In some rooms he's Martin. In others

he's Martn. Hired by a well-funded arts institution on Chicago's Northside to

create a show with Chicago youth about violence on the Southside, Marteen finds

himself torn not only by the pronunciation of his name, but by the conflicting

needs of the institution and the young people it believes its "serving," and by

a city in a death struggle with its own divided self. Reaching into his own

history, he unearths, with his young ensemble, the story of the 1994 murder of

soccer star Andres Escobar in Medelln, Colombia, hoping a past-tense allegory

of violence in a deeply divided, faraway city will illuminate violence in the

deeply divided Chicago of today. Carlos Murillo's brilliant, rigorous play is

haunted and haunting, its meticulously rendered ghosts layered one atop another

like history, like lace.