Following Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, within days artists, families and friends turned to art to express what news accounts and real-time video — shot by Hamas terrorists, Palestinian civilians and survivors and shared on social media — could not. Art — music, dance, film, theater and literature — provides a way to express the inexpressible, navigate the undiscussable, process the horrific. And, ultimately, never forget.
Jan. 22, 2026, is day 835 that the last Israeli’s — Ran Gvili — remains have been held in Gaza. No play, song or poem, will bring him home. But, for Irish-American journalists Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, the stories of Oct. 7, told by the survivors themselves, must not be ignored or forgotten.
The husband-and-wife journalistic team, founders of The Unreported Story Society, have committed themselves to shedding light on important breaking news events that have often been ignored by mainstream media through theatrical dramatization. Shocking newsworthy events become, in their hands, theatricalized accounts — life becomes art.
This verbatim theater technique uses transcripts of trials, interviews and testimony to create narrative plays that are ripped from the headlines. These current events theater pieces sometimes lean into newsworthiness in their own right. Since 2017, the duo has theatricalized events as varied as the FBI investigation into Russia and Hilary Clinton’s emails, which reportedly was a hit when it was performed at CPAC — the Conservative Political Action Conference; a trial involving a gay rights organization that opposed the trans agenda; and the Harvey Weinstein trial, reenacted from transcripts as a podcast.
Most recently McElhinney and McAleer have applied this theater vérité technique to the Oct. 7 attack. The result: “October 7,” a verbatim play culling from more than 100 hours of interviews the reporters conducted with survivors of the massacre during a visit to Israel just two weeks after the attack.
An off-Broadway production had a six-week stint in New York mainly at the Actors’ Temple Theatre in the summer of 2024. While the New York Post called the play “spellbinding,” it has faced accusations from anti-Zionist organizations and individuals that the stories are fabricated. On Jan. 28, for one night only, The Unreported Story Society brings “October 7” to the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.
“‘October 7’ was the perfect story for us,” McElhinney explained. “Everyone wanted to talk about the war in Gaza, everyone wanted to talk about Oct. 8, but nobody wanted to talk about Oct. 7.” McAleer added that, “People were talking about the electricity being cut off in Gaza … while [Israeli] bodies were still laying out in the open” waiting to be identified and buried.
McElhinney was struck by the attack on hundreds of young adults attending the Nove music festival in Re’im. “There were bunch of young people at a dance party … and terrorists … [perpetrated] an extraordinary level of violence and brutality on them. They were young, cool, very progressive, having a great time and just living life and loving life.”
Visiting Ireland at the time of the attack, the two Irish Catholic journalists immediately noticed the lopsided coverage of the events. “We were hearing stories about what had happened at this massacre,” McElhinney said, “but that was not being reflected by mainstream outlets … they were talking about anything else other than this extraordinary thing happened to young people who were gunned down in huge numbers … and kidnapped.”
Before they flew to Tel Aviv and during their three weeks researching and interviewing in Israel, the pair worked their sources. “We reached out to everyone we ever knew who knew someone or something about Israel,” McElhinney said. One friend had a cousin near Tel Aviv who knew a rabbi in Ofakim, a former development town not far from Beersheva in southern Israel, which lost 47 of its residents that Oct. 7.
That’s how they met police officer Itamar Alus. The Ofakim resident was at home the morning of Simchat Torah — a fall Jewish festival — when he heard gunfire. Alus picked up his handgun and went out to investigate. He saw Hamas terrorists firing at civilians. During the firefight and later, Alus took down terrorists and aided and protected injured Ofakim residents, including a rabbi who had been shot. McElhinney noted that, while Alus survived the Oct. 7 attack, he died on Jan. 3 of this year of an unnamed medical cause at just 41.
His is one of many stories told in the play, including Shani Arditi, rescued from the Nova festival, and Zaki Misrakhi, an Orthodox Coca-Cola plant technician who rescued nearly 100 concert goers in the company van.
With an abundance of films — both documentaries and dramatizations — books, songs, art installations, poems and other creative output made in Israel and around the world in the wake of the Oct. 7 events, the question arises: for whom is this particular play intended?
“It’s for people who need to see it,” McAleer asserted. “We want to bring it to the places where people need the truth, that’s why we bring it to college campuses.” And also why he and his partner are bringing it to the Kennedy Center under the auspices of The Unreported Story Society, a nonprofit that raised funds for this event through a GoFundMe campaign, among other fundraising endeavors.
Asked about the controversy surrounding the Kennedy Center under its new board president Donald Trump, who recently added his name to the national memorial for the slain president and last year fired the board and much of the senior and long-time staff at the nation’s performing arts center, McAleer scoffed.
“I grant it’s controversial,” he said. “But I’m not going to take any of that crap from people who spent years tearing down statues and renaming buildings and … having land acknowledgements and destroying art and canceling people for something they said on Twitter.”
McElhinney added that she wants “October 7,” the play, to run in her birth country, Ireland, which has exhibited both strong antisemitic and anti-Zionist sentiments in recent years. As well, both authors hope more college campuses present the work. “But it’s not easy, and we’re being blocked wherever we go,” she said. “It’s the people who say, ‘We think it’s terrible that the Kennedy Center is renamed,’ but they have no problem blocking a play containing only Jewish voices from their campuses.”
McAleer added, “These are deeply intolerant people … and they need to be called out, not tolerated. This play needs to be in their face.”
“This is the world we’re in now, and it’s our job as journalists to bring the truth to people, even if they don’t want it,” McElhinney said. “They need to hear the truth and see the truth. That’s why we’re bringing it to the Kennedy Center.”
“October 7,” a verbatim play by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, Jan. 28 at 7:30 p.m. Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, 2700 F St., NW, Washington, D.C. Tickets $51.75 to $74.75. Call 202-467-4600 or visit kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/theater/2025-2026/unreported-story-society-october-7.
Lisa Traiger is an award-winning arts journalist who covers the performing and visual arts in the Washington, D.C., region and beyond.
