286 - COVID-19 and the Arts Part 3: Virtual Showtime at The Apollo Theater
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2021
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem paused live performances last March, there were questions about what would happen next. Like many venues, the theater made the transition to virtual performances, drawing audiences from all over the world, but it also considered ways to serve its local community including microgrants for nearby businesses and displaying messages of hope on its marquee. Fatima Jones, the senior director of marketing and communications, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how the health of the community and the theater are intertwined, and how the pandemic may have a lasting impact on how The Apollo thinks about its programming. You can check out the Apollo Theater at www.apollotheaters.org.
KEYWORDS: community mental health; performing arts; pandemic response
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have |
| 0:33.9 | ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:39.0 | at jh.edu. That's public health question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.6 | Today, I speak with Fatima Jones, the senior director of marketing and communications |
| 0:53.3 | for the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. |
| 0:57.0 | Our topic is how the theater has adapted and expanded its activities while staying true to its mission during the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| 1:06.0 | Let's listen. |
| 1:09.0 | Fatima Jones, thank you so much for joining me to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic and the Apollo Theater in New York. |
| 1:18.0 | Could we start by just telling me about what happened when the pandemic struck? |
| 1:26.6 | Oh, well, first of all, I just want to say thank you for having me. |
| 1:30.3 | It's such a pleasure to be here. |
| 1:32.1 | Well, the first thing that happened when the pandemic struck was that we thought about our staff and protecting our staff and just making sure that they're okay, |
| 1:44.1 | as well as some of the artists that were scheduled to be at the Apollo, |
| 1:49.0 | and our audiences. |
| 1:50.6 | So we followed the state guidelines, |
| 1:53.6 | and we put things on pause thinking that it would just be temporary. |
| 1:58.0 | Actually, we had a play called Blue that was supposed to go to Broadway, |
| 2:02.5 | but we ended up striking a deal to have it at the Apollo for, I think, at the time, |
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