The American Company

The most famous and long‐lived troupe of traveling professional actors in our early history was headed initially by David Douglass; his wife, the former Mrs. Hallam; and his stepson, Lewis Hallam Jr. The name, prompted to some extent by growing anti‐British sentiments of the day, seems to have been used first in 1763 while the company was touring Virginia and the Carolinas. Constant travel was necessary when the company was formed not only because no American city could yet sustain a full season of theatricals, but also because puritanical movements frequently succeeded in closing playhouses for intervals. Despite all the traveling, Douglass supervised the building of several important early American playhouses, including New York's John Street Theatre where the troupe eventually was based. After Douglass's departure, the company was run by Hallam Jr., John Henry, John Hodgkinson, and William Dunlap who moved the company to the new Park Theatre in 1798. By this time the troupe was known affectionately and officially as the Old American Company. The name remained until 1805, when Dunlap went bankrupt and Thomas Abthorpe Cooper assumed the reins at the Park. During its forty‐plus years, virtually every important performer in America appeared with the troupe at one time or another. Most of its repertory consisted of the popular English pieces of the era, but to the company goes credit for being the first professional ensemble to mount native drama when it presented Thomas Godfrey's The Prince of Parthia in 1767.