Killing of a Gentleman Defender

In some rooms he’s Martin. In othershe’s Martín. Hired by a well-funded arts institution on Chicago’s Northside tocreate a show with Chicago youth about violence on the Southside, Marteen findshimself torn not only by the pronunciation of his name, but by the conflictingneeds of the institution and the young people it believes its “serving,” and bya city in a death struggle with its own divided self. Reaching into his ownhistory, he unearths, with his young ensemble, the story of the 1994 murder ofsoccer star Andres Escobar in Medellín, Colombia, hoping a past-tense allegoryof violence in a deeply divided, faraway city will illuminate violence in thedeeply divided Chicago of today. Carlos Murillo’s brilliant, rigorous play ishaunted and haunting, its meticulously rendered ghosts layered one atop anotherlike history, like lace.