In Memoriam
Thomas Barbour, Playwright
July 25, 1921 ‐ December 29, 2005
Thomas Barbour was born in New York City in 1921. He attended Princeton University in the class of 1943, but did not receive his B.A. degree until 1946, having spent three World War II years driving an ambulance with the American Field Service in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. After the war, Tom lived for four years in Boston, MA, receiving his M.A. degree from Harvard University in 1948, and teaching for a year part-time at Boston University and two years full-time as an instructor in English at Emerson College. He then spend a year and a half living in Europe, mainly in France, returning with a trunk full of plays, including The Smokeweaver's Daughter, poems, articles, and stories. Upon his return in 1952, Tom began living in Greenwich village in New York City.
As a child of ten, Tom was bitten by the acting bug on appearing as a singing sprite in a red satin dress, backing up Ariel, in a day-school performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Thereafter, acting was, for him, a hobby at prep school, in college, where he was president of Princeton's Theatre Intime, and in community theatre, significantly with Group Twenty Players in Unionville and Avon, CT, and later in Wellesley, MA. Tom joined Actors' Equity Association in 1953, and subsequently became a member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild (now, after merger, SAG-AFTRA), and his hobby became his profession as an actor in all media until his death in 2005.
Among Tom's works written for the stage are five plays included in the collection, The Smokeweaver’s Daughter and Other Plays by Thomas Barbour, published by Stageplays Theatre Company (Stageplays®) in 2004. Tom Barbour was a member of the Board of Directors of Stageplays Theatre Company from 2001-2005.
