‘Five Challahs:’ What People Are Saying About OCTOBER 7 - The Play
We need your help to launch the next phase of OCTOBER 7 .
The first run of OCTOBER 7 - The Play has ended, but we’re just getting started.
During the six week run in New York City, we met so many incredible people who were touched by the performance. We got amazing feedback, and people are begging us to take the show to college campuses, their hometowns, and even abroad.
And we would love to do this. We want to take the play to every college campus that thought it was okay to lock down the school in support of Hamas terrorists. We’d love it if the directors from all over the world who have approached us were able to launch their own productions of OCTOBER 7. But we need help.
Not only do we need to cover the costs of taking the play on tour, we still need to pay off the first run. Quality costs, and we also needed heavy security at every performance. Please donate here to help us reach our goals.
OCTOBER 7 is a verbatim play, meaning it’s entirely based off of interviews we conducted in Israel with people who lived through the attack. Their testimonies were recorded barely six weeks after they went through the worst day of their lives. But it says a lot about the Israeli spirit that the play isn’t all doom and gloom – it’s hopeful, uplifting, and even funny at times.
The play is worth seeing. It tells the truth about the October 7 attack that the media wants to ignore. But you don’t have to take our word for it. So many people have written reviews or told us what the play meant to them when we interviewed them after performances.
We were so pleased to have Jewish rapper Kosha Dillz attend a performance, and he even performed a rap he wrote about the hostages still being held in Gaza. He said the play was “the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” and that he’s never seen better acting. He made this video about what it was like to see the play.
We also spoke to so many people who got emotional about what they had witnessed. They’re a testimony to how powerful the play is. The young woman below who came on opening night tearfully explained how the play “told the story so incredibly in such an intense, emotional way.”
The woman in the next video was moved to tears because her cousin was killed by terrorists 13 years ago, and said that all victims of Hamas deserve to be remembered.
The Jewish Voice and Opinion called the play a “must-see production,” and gave us the best rating we could ever ask for: five out of five challah loaves.
Just a note: the play is intense, but everyone agreed that it was cathartic rather than disturbing. The Jewish News Syndicate wrote:
The staccato intensity of the play leaves you feeling like you lived through a tiny fraction of what Israelis had to endure that day. It’s not a pleasant feeling but for American Jews, who are now enduring a level of antisemitism that none of us were prepared for, it can strengthen our own resilience.
And while it’s beyond sad that an Irish Catholic couple is braver than NYC’s entire theater district—heavily populated with Jewish playwrights and producers—one is ultimately left with a small amount of faith in humanity. The same kind of faith that Christian resistance to Hitler gave European Jews.
We’re gratified by their kind words, but we’re just doing journalism. It’s a lost art, but we’re committed to it.
So many Jewish people we met were touched that two people who weren’t Jewish cared about what they had experienced. Especially since we’re Irish, and Ireland has been uniquely and show stoppingly antisemitic in the wake of October 7.
The Jewish Link noted this in a review:
It would be remiss not to mention the Irish duo’s comments on Ireland’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state. Stated McAleer: “This is why we need to remind people about Oct. 7.” Added McElhinney, “Every Jewish person that I [see], the man with the kippah, I honestly feel like apologizing, I feel like walking up to people and saying ‘I’m really sorry. They don’t speak for us, they don’t represent us.’”
Asked by The Link to address those who might feel that their anguish is too raw to contemplate seeing the play, McAleer remarked: “[The play is] not explicit, but it’s very emotional, it’s very moving … and there is a lot of hope and resilience.”
The Heritage Florida News ran a quote from our director Geoffrey Cantor about why everyone involved in the play is so committed to it.
This came along — the opportunity to do something positive in these turbulent times. Daunting in scope, it has been both an empowering and truly humbling experience.
‘October 7’ is testimony — a collective sharing of traumatic memory. It isn’t political. It isn’t commentary. Our only job was to find the balance between the devastation of what these people experienced, and the incredible force of hope and resilience that they embody, and to share that with the audience through the truth of their words. We committed ourselves as a company to ensure that the authentic voices of these remarkable people are heard so that others might be touched by their humanity and extraordinary resilience.
A glowing review in the Jewish Press called the play “a gut-punch that should be seen by all.” After in-depth praise of the actors and story telling, the review concludes with this testimony to the power of verbatim theater.
October 7: A Verbatim Play is a jarring piece of drama that will make you cry, make you want to scream, and make you feel lucky that when you put your head on your pillow, you have no fear that you will be attacked in your home or taken hostage. You will consider that if you go to a dance party, your worst fear would be that someone may mock your moves.
In showing the day that was the greatest massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, and by choosing to use a script only with words from the real interviews, the authenticity here is palpable. McAleer and Cantor are able to present a striking piece portraying the horrors without hyperbole. It should be seen by as many people as possible.
Back when the play opened, the New York Post said it was a “sanctuary for the truth,” and that the verbatim technique was “a powerful technique.”
These are just some of the reviews we received for this opening run. If these don’t convince you that Hamas-loving Marxists at America’s elite universities need to see OCTOBER 7, we don’t know what will. We’ve even had a request to show the play in Ireland, which also desperately needs an education in the truth.
Please help us do this by donating. Nothing can happen without funding. Thank you so much.