For the past two and a half months, I’ve spent many afternoons in the hidden spaces of New York’s performing arts world — its dressing rooms, rehearsal studios, green rooms, and backstage corridors. I’m a physician, and this fall I volunteered as one of two clinicians administering shots for the Entertainment Community Fund’s annual flu vaccination program, presented in partnership with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The long-running program brings free, on-site flu shots directly to casts, crews, musicians, stagehands, ushers, and members of the performing arts community across Broadway, off-Broadway, and beyond.
More than 2,000 flu shots later, delivered over nearly 70 sessions, I’ve come away with a deeper understanding of what community looks like. It was also a window into how public health lives or dies at the level of ordinary, everyday interactions.
In the hour or so before and after a show, people in the performing arts world move with a kind of contained urgency, taking in notes from rehearsal, resetting props, touching up costumes, tending to last-minute details. Amid this flurry, performers and staff stepped away from their tasks for a moment, rolled up a sleeve, got vaccinated, and returned to whatever they were doing.
At one particularly memorable session, a few actors used their brief moments offstage near the end of the final act — still in costume, the men in billowing colonial-style shirts and women in long period gowns — to receive their shots before curtain call.
Far more often, people came just after a performance had ended, still catching their breath, determined not to miss the chance before the short break between a matinee and evening show. Castmates often came together, encouraging one another or keeping each other company in line. Companies welcomed us into intimate spaces without hesitation so everyone who wanted protection could receive it.
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At each session, I heard versions of the same small truths:
“My mom told me to make sure I get the shot.” “Not sure I would’ve had time if you all hadn’t come here.” “This is so important — I can’t afford to get sick.” “I didn’t get the shot last year. I don’t want to miss it again.” “I’ve never gotten it, but my friends said I needed to.”
What struck me was not only the sincerity of these conversations, but the common thread running through them: People weren’t doing this just for themselves. They were doing it for their castmates. For their crew. For the show. For the elders in their company and the children at home. They understood instinctively that their own health was connected to the well-being of the people around them.
As a public health physician, I’ve spent years thinking about how to counter misinformation and rebuild trust in vaccines. When I signed up for this volunteer role, I thought I was helping provide access and convenience at a time when skepticism about public health remains high. And I was.
But what I witnessed was something deeper, and I came away with more than I offered: the simple but profound truth that vaccination is, at its core, an act of community.
That lesson crystallized for me a few weeks ago during a post-show appeal early in Broadway Cares’ Red Bucket fundraising campaign. Jonathan Groff, fresh off a performance, told a story from early in his career. More than 20 years ago, while waiting tables, he met Tom Viola, the longtime executive director of Broadway Cares. When Tom asked if he was an actor, Groff replied, “I’m trying to be one.” Tom’s response stayed with him for two decades: “If you want to be part of this community, you should start learning how we take care of each other.”
That exchange inspired Groff to volunteer as a Red Bucket collector, part of a fundraising campaign whose proceeds help support programs like this flu shot initiative. And now, 21 years later, as a celebrated star, he was onstage urging audiences to give to the same campaign that first taught him what it meant to care for the community he represents.
It was nothing flashy, just a few minutes after a show. But what struck me was the blend of gratitude and responsibility in his voice, a continuity of care and responsibility that came through with a kind of clarity that surprised me.
In that moment, it became evident to me that this community’s ability to care for itself is not accidental. It is chosen. It is practiced. It is sustained through institutions built and maintained over decades — Broadway Cares, the Entertainment Community Fund, and the people who give, volunteer, and show up year after year to keep one another healthy.
That ethos seems increasingly rare in American life. We live in a time of fraying social fabric, when loneliness is described as an epidemic and trust in institutions is low. Public health, once a shared civic commitment, has become politicized and misunderstood. But the backstage world offered a reminder of what public health actually looks like when it works: people choosing to protect one another.
The performing arts world understands, in a way shaped by the work itself, something fundamental about interdependence. If one cast member is sick, the entire production feels the strain. If a crew member is out, safety and timing are affected. The vitality of any show — and any community — depends on people recognizing their ties to one another. Vaccination, in this context, becomes a quiet expression of mutual responsibility.
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This is not how we usually talk about vaccines in America. We tend to frame vaccination as a personal choice, a matter of individual risk. But the people I met backstage did not speak in the language of individualism. They spoke in the language of belonging. Protecting themselves meant protecting their colleagues, and protecting their colleagues meant helping the show go on. It was a cycle of care rather than a calculation of individual risk.
There is something especially resonant about witnessing this during the holiday season, when people gather indoors, when respiratory viruses surge, when the rituals that bring us together also carry risk. So much of what is best about this time of year — generosity, connection, shared purpose — mirrors what I saw in those vaccination clinics.
I don’t want to romanticize things. Not everyone gets vaccinated. Not everyone can. Some face barriers of access, time, or trust. Some remain hesitant, and public health has work to do to earn back confidence.
But when we focus only on hesitancy and resistance, we miss the quieter story: the many people who, in small and steady ways, continue to care for one another.
The flu shot is not glamorous. It doesn’t make headlines. But it is one of the simplest ways we protect the people around us — children, older adults, immunocompromised neighbors, co-workers who can’t afford missed work. It’s a minor gesture with major effects, the kind that often goes unnoticed because it is ordinary. But ordinary acts of care are what communities are built on.
As I wrapped up the last clinic of the season, I thought about the thousands of people who had come through those rooms: chorus members, carpenters, musicians, wig designers, ushers, dressers, stage managers, stars, and understudies. People whose work depends on one another in ways most audiences will never see. People who understand, deeply and instinctively, that community is something you practice, not something you simply inherit.
In their willingness to roll up their sleeves — sometimes literally between scenes — I saw a truth we often forget: we are strongest when we take care of one another. And in a year when so much feels uncertain, that simple lesson is worth holding on to.
Ram Koppaka, M.D., Ph.D., is a public-health physician and former senior CDC leader. In fall 2025, he volunteered as a clinician with the Entertainment Community Fund’s backstage flu vaccination program.
