Apollo Documentary Set to Debut in November on HBO

“The Apollo” traces black culture through the theater’s 85-year history.

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By Patrick Mulligan

Seventeen-year-old Ella Fitzgerald launching her career singing and scatting in 1934.

The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, performing an energetic “Say It Loud–I’m Black and I’m Proud.”

The Motown Revue assembling the Miracles, the Supremes, the Temptations and Little Stevie Wonder on one stage.

The storied performers who have rubbed the tree stump onstage at the Apollo Theater, celebrating its 85th year, dominate an upcoming HBO documentary, to be televised November 6.

“The Apollo,” directed by Academy Award-winning short documentarian Roger Ross Williams, explores the role the theater has played in Harlem and the black community from its 1934 founding to its new staging of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me.”

“The Apollo is a town hall,” said Williams in a discussion following a screening Friday at the Apollo. “It is the center of black culture not only in Harlem, but in America.”

Producer Lisa Cortés and Apollo executive producer Kamilah Forbes joined Williams for a Q&A after the 101-minute film drew applause from a packed house.

“We have used music and art to lift ourselves out of oppression and segregation and slavery and we continue to do that,” Williams said. “Staying political and telling that story was the way to tell the story of the Apollo.”

In early 1934, the Apollo Theater was founded in a venue built 20 years earlier. At the time, black musicians, singers and actors performed for white audiences at clubs like the Savoy or Cotton Club. But as the film recounts, within its first year, the Apollo began hiring black acts and became a showcase for black artists.

Joe Gray, Apollo’s Amateur Night audience warm up master. Image courtesy of HBO

In addition to established acts who played the Apollo, the documentary spotlights Amateur Night. As the Apollo prospered, performers from all over competed for the chance to be discovered, placing their career prospects in the hands of vocal audiences guided by the motto, “Be good or be gone.”

“Anyone can walk in off the street and audition for Amateur Night. And anyone can win Amateur Night. And some of the greatest names in our history, some of the greatest performers in our history, have won Amateur Night,” said Williams.

The documentary follows the theater through the changing black experience. When riots broke out across Harlem in 1964, some residents stood guard outside to be sure the theater would not be destroyed in the violence.

“People feel like the Apollo is their sanctuary,” says Forbes at the end of the film.

But despite its popularity, the theater experienced heavy losses in the 70s and was forced to close in 1975. When it reopened later that year, “you could feel the vibration in the street,” said rapper Doug E Fresh in the film. “We were happy to have it back.”

The 1980s saw the creation of the TV show “Showtime at the Apollo,” but the theater remained unprofitable. Not until the state took over ownership in 1991 and established a nonprofit foundation was the theater’s future guaranteed. Today, funding for the foundation comes from a combination of government grants, corporate sponsorships, philanthropic donations and individual gifts.

Interwoven throughout the film, a secondary narrative depicts rehearsals for “Between the World and Me,” which opens for a three-night run on October 25.

“Things have changed, but things have not changed in America,” said Williams. “If you look through the history of Harlem, over and over and over again it’s the same story, it’s the same thing. And no one speaks to that more than Ta-Nehisi and his work.”

As the Apollo celebrates 85 years, it’s planning for many more. The company will open two new theater spaces next fall at the former Victoria Theater, a few doors away on 125th Street.

“I think we are building on our legacy,” said Forbes during the Q&A. “It is continuing the growth of our mission, of cultivating artists, audiences, and a celebration and deepening and pushing black culture forward.”

 

(Photo by Patrick Mulligan)

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