“The beauty of your building, the inspiration, the awe, the acoustics, the lighting, clearly theaters think about all that, but there are these other aspects of how they actually influence health beyond the performance, including the spaces the public doesn't see. It's not just the auditorium.”

Joseph Allen is the director of the Healthy Buildings Program and associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (located in Boston, Massachusetts), which in partnership with Harvard’s American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), created an online guide that uses public health principles to help theaters establish best practices to keep staff and audiences safe. In the new issue of American Artscape, Allen spoke with us about creating the roadmap with A.R.T., what it means to have a healthy building, and how performing artists and theaters are uniquely positioned to advocate for public health interventions.