Northwestern University evacuates October 7 play performance after fire alarm was set off

A performance of the verbatim play October 7 at Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium was abruptly disrupted and forced to evacuate when a fire alarm was set off on Tuesday.

The production, written by Irish journalists Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, is built from word-for-word survivor testimonies detailing the Hamas terror attacks in Israel.

The touring play has been staged at various universities and venues across the United States to present firsthand accounts of the events, with upcoming performances scheduled at CUNY in Manhattan in December, Cornell University in December, and the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles in January.

McElhinney posted video footage of the incident online, capturing the packed theater as the alarm blared and audience members stood up to exit the auditorium. Sharing the video on social media, McElhinney wrote, “Breaking. Right now at Northwestern, our play October 7 has been disrupted by someone setting off a fire alarm. The whole theater has to be evacuated. This hits even stronger because it’s already October 7 in Israel.”

McElhinney and McAleer later posted on social media in an update following initial online postings of the disruption said to have been set off by a student, that it was not yet confirmed whether a student was responsible for triggering the alarm.

The play is based on accounts from survivors of Oct. 7

McElhinney posted video footage of the incident online, capturing the packed theater as the alarm blared and audience members stood up to exit the auditorium. Sharing the video on social media, McElhinney wrote, “Breaking. Right now at Northwestern, our play October 7 has been disrupted by someone setting off a fire alarm. The whole theater has to be evacuated. This hits even stronger because it’s already October 7 in Israel.”

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, co-creators McAleer and McElhinney explained that they weren’t present at the sold-out performance but were watching it live via Zoom while their production team was on site. McAleer told the Post that approximately a quarter of the way into the show, someone pulled the fire alarm, leaving audience members very scared.

Among those in attendance was Abby Polin, the aunt of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, along with Hersh’s grandmother. Polin told the Post, “In the midst of a packed theater in Evanston, Illinois, on the Northwestern University campus, watching a riveting verbatim performance of testimonies of October 7 survivors produced by non-Jewish Irish journalists, that an alleged Jew-hater pulled the fire alarm to interrupt a story about hatred is so beyond appalling.”

“An audience member, also not Jewish, said she felt in a way that it enhanced the performance because it must be what Israelis feel like hearing alarms and sirens so often. After the fire department gave the okay to go back in, the audience once again went through security to watch the last 20 minutes of the performance, which closed with a standing ovation,” Polin told the Post.

She added, “It was an audience of people of all ages and religions in attendance. It just reinforced to the audience how evil people in this world can be.”

The show must go on

Following the evacuation, police arrived at the scene. McAleer told the Post that about half of the full house of roughly 940 people chose to return after the police gave the all-clear, while others did not feel safe enough to re-enter.

Emphasizing that the show must go on, McAleer said that the cast and crew were deeply determined not to be shut down, noting that the actors were exceptionally passionate and that finishing the performance yielded a standing ovation. McAleer added that organizers intended to file a formal police report to ensure the incident is fully investigated.

In a statement to the Post, the play’s director, Jeff Gurner, dismissed the disruption as an insignificant protest, asserting with a message to whoever the perpetrator was that he “achieved exactly nothing. The actors and audience reconvened, the performance picked up where it left off, and the voices of those people whose stories were told in the play, along with the memory of those who were lost on October 7, were more powerful than ever.”

Gurner said it was an “absurd little act of imagined revolutionary activism” that amounted to nothing more than them having to wait out an investigation, their inevitable outing, and facing deserved consequences.” He added that the police and fire authorities both immediately responded to the scene, and campus security said there would be an internal investigation by the university.

Elad Strohmayer, Israel’s consul-general in Chicago, reacted to the incident on X/Twitter, writing, “Tonight at Northwestern, when it was already October 7 in Israel, a fire alarm interrupted a play based on the testimonies of October 7 survivors, forcing the audience to evacuate. The survivors’ stories deserve to be heard, and the audience and production deserve to be safe.

“I am glad to hear that Northwestern is taking this seriously and investigating. The investigation must promptly establish what triggered the alarm and whether it was deliberately set off to disrupt the performance. If that is confirmed, those responsible must be held accountable.

Strohmayer wrote, “It is unacceptable that the Jewish community cannot hold an event honoring October 7 survivors, or any event for that matter, without fearing for its safety.”

Northwestern did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.