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FIRST ON FOX— After facing protests during its run in New York City, a play depicting survivor accounts of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel is coming to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in January.
Its creators say the production reflects a cultural shift at the arts venue since President Donald Trump took over the Kennedy Center’s board earlier this year, where conservative perspectives are now more welcome.
“It sends a clear message that, finally, real diversity, as in diversity of thought, is welcome in the heart of the nation’s capital,” play co-creator Phelim McAleer told Fox News Digital. “Hopefully this is the beginning of great art being on the stage of the Kennedy Center.”
The play, titled “OCTOBER 7,” is a dramatized stage reading based on word-for-word testimonies from survivors and family members of the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which left 1,200 people dead and more than 250 others kidnapped by Hamas terrorists. It presents firsthand accounts from the wounded, the grieving and the heroes “who fought back and saved multiple lives,” according to its creators.
McAleer and his wife, Ann McElhinney, are Irish journalists who traveled to Israel directly after October 7 and spent three weeks interviewing people affected by the terror attack. McAleer said they were troubled by how quickly global narratives shifted on Israel, and they hope the play will serve as a reminder of the atrocities of that day.
Hero Zaki Mizrakhi being interviewed by OCTOBER 7 journalists and playwrights, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. (Unreported Story Society)
“The October 7 massacre was still ongoing when many in the media, academia and the streets were already blaming Israel, ignoring the slaughter of innocent men, women and children,” McAleer said.
“We were talking about child and baby murder here,” he added. “The taking of babies as hostages is almost unprecedented in modern warfare.”
The play premiered off-Broadway in New York City for a six-week run in 2024 before launching a nationwide campus tour with performances at Princeton University, UCLA and Bowdoin College in Maine.
According to The Times of Israel, the play faced backlash and threats from anti-Israel activists ahead of its New York run.
Pro-Palestine protesters carrying signs gather at Union Square. (Stephen Yang for Fox News Digital)
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“Performances of ‘OCTOBER 7’ required security guards, metal detectors, and armed guards in the audience every night due to disruptive, destructive and sometimes violent anti-Israel protesters in addition to the almost taken-for-granted terror threats,” the outlet reported.
McAleer said some actors feared participating could damage their careers and the play required a constant police presence.
“What a damning indictment of NYC that a play using just testimony of people who survived a massacre should need police protection,” he told Fox News Digital.
The Times reported that discussions in a Facebook theater group bashed the play as “fabricated” and part of an effort to build sympathy for “genocide.” Other posts urged actors to “stay away” from the project and encouraged disrupting the play or sending anonymous hate mail, according to the report.
Despite criticism from some in the theater community, the production received positive reviews from several critics.
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“‘OCTOBER 7’ insists that we look darkness in the face, try to understand what is happening, and make no excuses,” a review posted by a critic at Stage and Cinema reads. “It is an effectively rendered eyewitness account offered in the interest of radical truth telling, and altogether admirable.”
McAleer said he plans to invite Trump and members of Congress to the performance.
“Their presence sends a clear message that the U.S. will not ignore or memory-hole the events of October 7 and instead will honor and memorialize the survivors and those who lost their lives on the worst day for Jews since the Holocaust,” he said. “It’s never been more important to tell the truth about October 7. It’s never been more important to tell the truth about Israel. Both sides of the political divide need to hear it.”
President Donald Trump looks down from the Presidential Box in the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as he participates in a guided tour and leads a board meeting on March 17, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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He hopes the Washington audience will leave with a deeper understanding of the victims.
“What will most strike the DC audience is just how like them the victims of October 7 are,” he said. “So many of the victims were urbane, young, educated, liberal… Many at NOVA were not religious — they were partying on the Sabbath — they supported and worked with the people from Gaza — and then they were murdered by them.”
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The play highlights a cross-section of Israelis, from the victims to the bereaved to the heroes who saved lives that day, like an off-duty police officer who killed two terrorists and rescued nearly a dozen people.
“The stories are amazing because they are true — they are also compelling,” he said.
The play will be staged Jan. 28, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Center.
