October 7 Play Disrupted by Fire Alarm at Northwestern

Clear Facts

• Theatergoers at Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium experienced a fire alarm activation during the October 7 play on October 6, 2024.
• Co-writers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer described the disruption as a deliberate attempt to intimidate the audience during the most emotional portion of the performance.
• Northwestern University Police are investigating the incident while the play has completed its run at multiple universities across the country.

The creators of the spoken-word play “OCTOBER 7” called the fire alarm activation at Northwestern University a deliberate act of intimidation. The performance featured survivor testimonies from the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel.

Ann McElhinney explained that many audience members initially believed the alarm was part of the show. The sirens coincided with dialogue about rocket attacks and emergency alerts from the October 7 massacre.

“Initially, they thought it was part of the play because they heard these sirens going off, and the dialogue prior to that had been about sirens going off, rockets going off, the red alarm going off,” McElhinney told Fox News Digital. “They were like ‘Oh, this is part of the play,’ until they realized it wasn’t.”

After authorities cleared the building, many attendees left while others returned with renewed determination. McAleer described the standing ovation that followed the performance as a tribute to both the production and those who refused to be silenced.

“The standing ovation was for the actors, the standing ovation was for the director, the standing ovation was for the stories. But it’s also, I think people were giving themselves a standing ovation that someone had tried to intimidate them, that someone had tried to say to them, ‘You’re not going to tell the truth. We don’t want to hear the truth, we want to shut you up, we want to shut down, we want to frighten you and intimidate you.’ And they didn’t succeed,” McAleer said.

The writers believe the alarm was triggered by someone who had sat through most of the performance. They called the act more insidious than open protest because it targeted the emotional core of the testimonies.

“This was someone, we believe, someone sat through the play and then came out at the most emotional time,” McAleer stated. “It’s something very insidious that someone decided to disrupt this rather than even, by the way, have a protest, make their voice heard.”

The incident occurred on the anniversary of the October 7 attacks. McAleer noted the timing was particularly significant given the play’s focus on honoring the victims and survivors.

“You mean, you can’t mourn your dead. You can’t mark your anniversaries. You can’t walk the campus without fear of being attacked or having your event disrupted,” McAleer said about the current state of American college campuses. “What does that say about the campus idea of freedom and free speech and free thought? Free thought is dead on American campus[es]. Free speech seems to be dead on the American campuses.”

The couple plans to file a police report and hopes authorities will pursue the matter fully. The play has been performed at multiple universities including New York City, Princeton, UCLA, Bowdoin College, and the Kennedy Center, often requiring enhanced security measures.

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