Storytelling and Growth at the Apollo Theater
Faith Jarrell ’25 honed her storytelling and media skills through a transformative internship at the world-famous Apollo Theater in the heart of Harlem, New York City.
Since 1934, the Apollo Theater has played a major role in platforming emerging artists in jazz, swing, bebop, R&B, and many other music genres. Today, the Apollo Theater is a nonprofit organization that, in addition to being a performance venue, is a cultural center celebrating Black history, offering educational programs, and engaging in community outreach.
This summer, Jarrell, through Washington’s Explore America Summer Internship program, joined the Apollo Theater Education Department. There she wrote and produced podcasts telling the stories of long-time Harlem residents. Despite the hybrid nature of her internship— balancing remote work with occasional visits to New York—Jarrell found the experience both manageable and rewarding.
The podcasts are part of the Apollo Theater Oral History Project (OHP), which captures the voices of Apollo “history-makers” and other essential figures integral to the theater's evolution.
“It was a preexisting podcast series,“ Jarrell explained. "My supervisor came up with the idea to have fourth and fifth graders from a local school in New York interview the significant elders of Harlem.”
Jarrell worked on podcasts numbers seven and eight in the "Stories Our Elders Tell Us" series. Her episodes featured the stories of Mrs. Runeda Miller-Gerald and Ms. Margaretta "Bobo" Goines. Jarell chose these two women after reading numerous transcripts and listening to extensive recordings from the many interviews the children did with elders in the community between 2010 and 2019.
Once she had chosen who to feature, Jarell wrote scripts for a narrator to recount the women’s experiences growing up in Harlem, including reflections on segregation and their connections to the Apollo Theater. In the finished podcasts, the narrator’s descriptions were interspersed with excerpts from the actual interviews with the women. Jarrell’s goal was to produce entertaining podcasts that effectively depicted the essence of these women’s lives while allowing new generations to connect with the elders’ experiences.
“It took me quite a while to make each episode because I was fixing so many little things,” Jarrell said. “This internship meant a lot to me, and the project meant a lot to my supervisor, so I wanted it to be as perfect as possible.”
Jarrell’s deep-rooted passion for storytelling began in childhood. “I’ve been writing stories since I was nine,” she said. “I wrote my first play in second grade and made my friends perform it with me. My main goal for so long has been to write something people connect with in some way.”
Her background in literary arts and media studies and her experiences at the Apollo, have strengthened her resolve. “I'd really like to engage other people. [My writing] doesn't necessarily have to be entertaining, but I want people to come away from it with something if that makes sense. Whether it's happy or sad, I want people to be able to connect and relate to the stories I tell.”
She emphasized that success, for her, is defined by personal pride and dedication rather than external praise. “I think success for me means feeling proud of what you've done,” she said. “I feel like you should count success as did I work hard enough? Do I feel proud of the work I've done? And I can say over the past few years that I've been at Washington College I feel like I have had a very successful college career because I'm proud of the work I've done.”
Jarrell credits the Apollo Theater internship with impacting her career aspirations. “I was able to not only prove to my supervisor that I could do this but also to myself,” she said “I don't know if I want to go into podcasting in the future, but it definitely helped me learn another way to tell stories.
“I'm hoping I can take with me the professionalism that I learned,” Jarrell continued. “I feel like a lot of people get scared they don't know what to do after college, but I feel like this experience really helped me learn not only what kind of environment I want to be in, but what kind of work I want to do.”
This semester, Jarrell stepped into the role of station manager of Radio Free George, the podcasting channel at Washington. She intends to leverage her experiences at the Apollo to help elevate the station's profile.
The Explore America Summer Internship program of the Washington College Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience places Washington students in full-time, fully paid summer internships at an array of leading cultural institutions and nonprofits.
— Andraya Sudler ’26