Tom Jones was a writer who wrote the words and story of The Fantasticks. The Fantasticks was a show that ran for a very long time off-Broadway.
Off-Broadway means that the show was not in the big theaters in New York City, but in smaller ones. Tom Jones also wrote other shows for Broadway, which is where the big theaters are.
Some of his other shows were 110 in the Shade and I Do, I Do!. Tom Jones died when he was 95 years old.
His son, Michael Jones, told a newspaper, The New York Times that his father died from a disease called cancer. He died at his home in a place called Sharon, Connecticut.
Tom Jones was born with the name Thomas Collins Jones on February 17, 1928. He was born in a place called Littlefield, Texas. He grew up in another place in Texas called Coleman.
He went to a school there called Coleman High School. He met another writer named Mr. Schmidt at a college called the University of Texas/Austin. They met in the late 1940s, which was a long time ago. They both studied there.
They wrote their first show as a Western. A Western is a kind of show that has cowboys and horses and guns.
Their show was called Joy Comes to Dead Horse. It was about a boy who had white skin and a girl who had brown skin. The girl’s name was Maria.
The boy and the girl loved each other. But then another show came out that had the same story. That show was called West Side Story.
So they had to change their show. They got a chance to perform their show at a college called Barnard University in the summer of 1959.
But they had no money to buy things for their show, like clothes or sets or special effects. So they made their show very simple and changed its name to “The Fantasticks.”
Tom Jones also acted in the original production of The Fantasticks. He used a different name when he acted. He used the name Thomas Bruce.
He played a character called Henry (The Old Actor). He played that character many times, even in 2010 when the show had been running for 50 years.
Jones and Schmidt worked together on “The Fantasticks” and two other shows for Broadway: “110 in the Shade” and “I Do! I Do!”.
In 1998, they were both honored by being added to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
The American Theatre Hall of Fame is a list of people who have done great things for theater in America.
Many actors have been in The Fantasticks, from Jerry Orbach and Rita Gardner in 1960, to Ricardo Montalban and Kristin Chenoweth, to Santino Fontana from “Frozen”.
The show got a special award from Tony, an organization that gives awards to theater shows, in 1991.The show ran for almost 42 years at a small theater in Greenwich Village. It closed in 2002 after 17,162 shows.
It was affected by 9/11, which was when some bad people attacked New York City with planes and killed many people. It was also affected by people wanting more edgy shows.
In 2006, “The Fantasticks” moved to a new theater in Times Square. Times Square is another neighborhood in New York City where there are many big theaters and lights and people.
In 2013, it reached 20,000 shows. It closed in 2017 after 21,552 shows. It was the longest-running show of any kind in American theater history.
Tom Jones is survived by his sons Michael and Sam Jones from his second wife Janet Watson, who died in 2016. She was a choreographer who worked on his show.
