FORT KENT, Maine — The show must go on, according to theater wisdom, and did Thursday evening even after fire alarms cause the audience and cast to evacuate Fox Auditorium during the opening night performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
The alarms sounded at about 8:45 p.m., as actor Adam Wilcox, who portrays Anne Frank’s father, was in the midst of delivering the play’s final monologue. The actors, crew members and 87 audience members vacated the University of Maine at Fort Kent auditorium as local firefighters responded with three engines, the ladder truck and the heavy rescue truck.
While firefighters surveyed the building, a group of audience members surrounded Wilcox out on the sidewalk where as he completed the monologue.
“Several audience members stated they wanted to hear it and Adam just started,” said Director Caryn Cleveland-Short.
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- Audience members gathered outside Fox Auditorium after fire alarms sounded during a performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” on Thursday, Oct. 12. While firefighters cleared the scene inside, actor Adam Wilcox finished delivering the play’s final monologue out on the sidewalk. (Andrew Birden)
“The audience came to see, hear, and feel the story of Anne Frank. Finishing the monologue on the sidewalk allowed people to see the anguish and horror of a father who had lost almost everything,” Wilcox said on Friday morning. “It is important that people know the ending. It is important that people know just how horrible the Nazis were.”
As for the alarms, Fort Kent Fire Department Chief Ed Endee said employees in the kitchen of The Bengal’s Lair cafeteria, which is adjacent to the auditorium in Cyr Hall, accidentally tripped a smoke detector in the Lair’s kitchen.
“It was just an odd happening,” Endee said Friday. “They went to put cleaning stuff on the grill but it was a little too warm still. A little steam is all it takes to set off a smoke detector. The system did it’s job, it was just a little too early to put on the cleaning liquid.”
Endee said firefighters reset the alarm system in Cyr Hall and cleared the scene shortly after 9 p.m.
Cleveland-Short said having fire alarms sound during a performance is a first for her, but everyone exited the auditorium safely with the help of the play’s technical director and UMFK Assistant Director of Media Services Aaron Bernstein.
“Aaron was excellent in moving quickly and people exited orderly,” she said.
Bernstein said the situation was unique for him too.
“This is the first time I ever recall a full alarm during a performance. ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ has so many alarms and sirens and explosions and such that the audience seemed to think that the real alarm was part of the play, at least at first. When informed that the alarm was real, they calmly evacuated according to plan.” he said. “We have designed plans and employees trained to follow them for evacuation of all public facilities at UMFK. We got everyone out safely in less than a minute, and then I did a sweep of certain areas for stragglers. When I was convinced we had no one hiding or wandering about injured or confused, I went out and explained to the audience, cast, and crew what was going on, and why we had to wait to re-enter.”
Cleveland-Short expressed pride in her troupe for their handling of the situation.
“The cast and crew were professional,” she said. “I guess you can say they were on fire tonight.”
The UMFK Theater Troupe will present “The Diary of Anne Frank” three more times this week at Fox Auditorium, with showings at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and a matinee at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
