Remembering Charlie

Tonight was a memorial, of sorts, for the inimitable Charlie Bethel at Open Eye. I guess I'm saying now what I should have said there.

I had met Charlie and seen his work many times by the time I actually worked with him at the Jungle. So I knew him artistically long before I knew him as a colleague, and I might have been a little stagestruck when we first interacted in the office together. Charlie was an incredible storyteller — one of the best I have ever known.

He was a pretty good person to work with, too. That was a weird, transitional year at the Jungle (and a particularly shitty year in my own life). With a lot of staff changes and part-time people and the like, Charlie was the welcoming committee, they guy that held it together. I know he did not particularly like that role — but he did it, because someone had to.

He was anxious to leave it, too. When Bain cast him in Recent Tragic Events, Charlie knew it was time to take a different step in his career, and embrace creating art more than administering it. He was anxious about it. But I think he also knew it was the way he needed to go.

I didn't stay much in touch with Charlie after I left the Jungle, and I regret that.

When my friend Dylan spoke about Charlie tonight, he told me after "I didn't know him that well. But he had an effect on me." I reminded him that, at memorials, no one checks your credentials. No one challenges your right to be there because you were or were not "close enough" to the person. It's enough just to remember them, and to try to be there for the people who they left behind.

The world is a less rich place without you in it, Charlie Bethel.

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