Students Create Audio Reenactment of Terrorist Act on US Soil 100 Years Ago

On January 11, 1917, German saboteurs destroyed the Canadian Car and Foundry munitions facility in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, burning down dozens of buildings in the complex and jeopardizing the lives of more than 1,000 workers.  The German action was taken to try to prevent the United States, which was neutral at that point in World War I, from supplying ammunition to the allied forces.  So, what does that have to do with Transmedia Projects students in 2017?

Thanks to four students in a fall 2016 Transmedia Projects class, the immediate aftermath of the explosion was streamed online as an audio reenactment, beginning at 3:45 pm on January 11, 2017, exactly one-hundred years to the minute of the actual explosion.   It can be heard on the website the students created as part of the transmedia experience.

The students involved in the project were Bethany Quinones, Joshua Oksman, Candice Caputo and Cesar Berrios.  In addition to scripting the audio reenactment, the website created by the students provides more in-depth information about the characters involved in the incident, including comments from heroine Tess McNamara, the company’s telephone operator, who is credited with saving the lives of the workers, by staying at her station and calling for evacuation even though the flames endangered her own life.

Musical theater students Allison Scott and Annie Hunt, in addition to Caputo, were involved in the recording session.

The story about the student project can be found here.