Killing of a Gentleman Defender
In some rooms he’s Martin. In others he’s Martín. 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 Medellín, 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.
Carlos Murillo is a playwright, director, and educator based in Chicago. He is a full professor at The Theatre School of DePaul University where he serves as the chair of theatre studies and head of playwriting. His plays have been produced widely throughout the U.S. and Europe, and are published by 53rd State Press, Dramatists Play Service, Dramatic Publishing and Smith & Kraus. American Theatre magazine called his trilogy, The Javier Plays “an absolutely extraordinary achievement.” Murillo is the recipient of numerous awards including a Doris Duke Impact Award, a Mellon Foundation National Playwright Residency Program Fellowship, a Met Life/Nuestros Voces Award from Repertorio Español, a Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights’ Center, and two National Latino Playwriting Awards from Arizona Theatre Company. He has received commissions from The Goodman, Steppenwolf, Playwrights Horizons, The Public, South Coast Rep, Berkeley Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and The Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis. He has guest taught at the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon, The University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop, the Kennedy Center, UT Austin, the Newberry Library, George Mason University, and Transylvania University. Carlos is a proud alumnus of New Dramatists where he was a resident playwright from 2007-2014. He has been a member of the board of MacDowell since 2017 and serves on the Executive Committee. He lives in the south side of Chicago.
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