The Freedom of the City

About the show

In 1970 Derry, three civil-rights marchers fleeing tear gas mistakenly take shelter in the mayor’s Guildhall parlour. Their presence is treated as an occupation; they discuss their lives while waiting for the violence to pass, then are shot by soldiers as they try to surrender. A tribunal reconstructs their deaths through fictionalized testimony and acquits the soldiers, turning the play’s parallel scenes into an indictment of the violence and its official account.