Since far too often we only publicly say nice things about people when they are dead I’ve decided to randomly pick a Facebook friend every day and say something nice about them.
May 2, 2019
Today’s person: Jarion Monroe!
When I met Jarion Monroe at Berkeley Rep he was one of the biggest people I’d ever met. Not physically, but in spirit. He just had this boisterous bigness which onstage could turn from joy to terror to murderous in a flash, and offstage was kind and gentle - in a boisterous way. I was just an apprentice at BRT, so he was like a Titan to me, but a really nice Titan. I never thought we would ever be friends, as he was simply such a powerhouse of the Bay Area, and I was... whatever the fuck I was. But he actually talked to me! And when we ran into each other years later he remembered me. We talked, swapped stories, he and Annie invited me to a birthday party, and once I was with the Mime Troupe he told me how he was waiting for Ed Holmes to die so he could come and play with us as the “Cheesy White Guy.”
It would have been so easy for Jarion to have simply ignored me, to dismiss me as an annoying upstart. But instead he welcomed me into a community of actors.