Theatergoers filed into the Cahn Auditorium at Northwestern University on Tuesday to see a play comprised of testimonies from those impacted by the 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel. As the attendees sat at the edge of their seats waiting to hear the fate of the people whose stories were told, a fire alarm went off, disrupting the evening.
Ann McElhinney, who co-wrote the play “OCTOBER 7” with her husband, Phelim McAleer, told Fox News Digital that many audience members initially remained seated, believing the alarms were part of the show.
“Initially, they thought it was part of the play because they heard these , and the dialogue prior to that had been about sirens going off, rockets going off, the red alarm going off,” McElhinney explained to Fox News Digital. “They were like ‘Oh, this is part of the play,’ until they realized it wasn’t.”
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After the theater had been evacuated and cleared by authorities, many people left, according to McElhinney, who told Fox News Digital that she believed that people were scared by the incident. However, she said others who chose to stay, feeling “defiant” and refusing “to be terrified by this.”
McAleer noted that the performance ended with a standing ovation, which he believed was both a tribute to those who worked on the show and those who returned after the alarm went off.
“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 told Fox News Digital.
In response to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, Northwestern Media Relations said in a statement, “At approximately 8:12 p.m., a fire alarm at Cahn Auditorium was activated, which caused the evacuation of the building. Upon a fire and police investigation, the building was determined safe, and guests invited back in. The event continued as planned and concluded at 9:45 p.m. The Northwestern University Police Department will continue their investigation.”
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While the play was disrupted, McAleer and McElhinney said there were no protesters outside the venue at the start of the show. McAleer told Fox News Digital that while “people are perfectly entitled to protest outside the venue,” what happened inside the theater was “more insidious.”
The couple said they believe someone deliberately activated the fire alarm after sitting through much of the performance.
“This was someone, we believe, someone sat through the play and then came out at the most emotional time,” McAleer told Fox News Digital.
“It’s something very insidious that someone decided to disrupt this rather than even, by the way, have a protest, make their voice heard. But no, they decided they didn’t want their â they did the sneaky, cowardly, insidious, nasty thing of setting off a fire alarm, causing huge fear and just absolute nervousness among the people who were there and caused this trauma on the anniversary of October 7th,” McAleer added.
McAleer pointed out that while it was still Oct.
