Tarik Jones

Tarik Jones (born 1998 in New Jersey) is a Black and Vietnamese actor and singer. He made his "start" in performing at the age of 6 years old, when he began to put on shows for his family with his older sister. He and his sister would go on trips to the store and ask for anything like scarves and toys to use as props for their house shows. They eventually stopped as they grew older. His sister began taking gymnastics lessons, but Tarik would learn the stunts on his own and help his sister learn those cartwheels and front handsprings. He eventually stopped performing by being influenced by the idea that people of color don't really perform, especially in suburban town with only two black students. His performing really took a break when he was 11 years old on a trip to California to celebrate his sister's 13 birthday. On night of her birthday, Tarik felt an extreme pain in his head which he quoted as feeling "like a million guns fired into my brain. He lost the ability to move, stand, sit, and also speak without it sounding like gibberish. He was diagnosed with an arteriovenous malformation which hemorrhaged, leading to a hemorrhagic stroke. He took physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy to relearn how to speak and coordinate his body. At 13, he became the first ever pediatric patient of gamma knife surgery. Because of this incident, Tarik made it on the cover of Robert Wood Johnson's magazine and was featured in a commercial for the hospital, his first on screen "performance." He is fully recovered, but with headaches only happening in the back of his head. In 5th grade, Tarik started filmmaking. It started with him almost entering a film competition with his best friend. In this process, the contest project was abandoned because he and his friend decided to make a web series instead. "The Mr Alien Show" was shot on a cheap flip phone camera with the only editing being stopping and starting the camera and using a negative filter. This lead to Tarik making many short films with his friends throughout his school years. He also began writing and producing his own music. He did not share these projects with many friends or even family because of his self consciousness of being a black performer in a household which encouraged school being the top priority. He also needed time to decompress from his mother's alcoholism, father's absence from the household, witnessing abuse, taking care of his younger sisters, and facing neglect. Tarik started college at Northeastern University as a Computer Science major because of familial influence. He took an acting class for the first time which prompted him to audition for the musical "Hair," which was his first acting audition and first play. He changed his major to theatre and within the span of two years, he had started a theatre company which focused on representation and introducing of students of color, worked at a TV station, worked of the Huntington Theatre Company, acting in a few plays and web series, producing a few shows, working as Faye Dunaway's personal assistant, and beginning his studies at National Theatre Institute. His mindset after years of abandoning his dreams became, "if I want something, I need to get it and I need to get it now."