Murillo: Killing of a Gentleman Defender

KILLING OF A GENTLEMAN DEFENDER
by Carlos Murillo
ISBN: 979-8989946181
$15
188 pages
5x7 inches
May 2026

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.

PRAISE

Like the best plays, Murillo’s Killing of a Gentleman Defender offers no easy answers or meta-whatever-fors. Deeply theatrical in how it spans time and place, the personal and the political collide in Gentleman Defender subverting expectation until delivering on its promise in heartbreaking poeticism.
Eliza Bent, Writer/Performer

A play by Carlos Murillo is like a Nirvana record. Stay with me here. It looks around and all it sees is people destroying one another, as if destruction is the only thing they know how to do. So the play gets loud about it. At the same time, it sees that these wretched people, who can only make bad decisions, are like everyone you know. The play won't break eye contact with them. That's when it gets quiet. A play by Carlos Murillo is impossible to live with, and as soon as it's over, you want it to start again.
Rob Handel, Chair of Dramatic Writing, Carnegie Mellon University

No contemporary playwright reckons with history’s rhythms and rhymes quite so adventurously as Carlos Murillo. Killing of a Gentleman Defender renders a searing account of the ineffable power—and intrinsic—limits of theatermaking as a tool to confront the violence shaping our presents, our pasts, and our futures.
Brian Herrera, Associate Professor of Theatre, Princeton University

A funny, sharp and smart script that asks questions about the role of storyteller, artist, and audience. Killing of a Gentleman Defender is an impressive ensemble piece. Just when you think you know where it's headed, the play surprises you in multiple ways. It makes you think about it for a very, very long time after leaving the theater.
Ike Holter, playwright

CONTRIBUTORS

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.

Cover photo: Jenn Udoni
Projections: Alice Heemang Kim