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.
