Lewis Hallam

Lewis Hallam , c.1714-1756, Anglo-American actor and manager of the first professional theatrical company in the United States. He arrived from England with his company in 1752 and opened at Williamsburg, Va., with Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. In 1753 he built the first theater in New York City, on Nassau St., where he presented Elizabethan and Restoration dramas, farces, and operettas. The company played in Philadelphia, toured the South, and then went to Jamaica, where Hallam died. His widow married David Douglass, and in 1758 they formed the American Company, in which Hallam's son, Lewis Hallam, Jr., c.1740-1808, performed. The younger Hallam excelled in comedy. In 1767 he played in Thomas Godfrey's Prince of Parthia, the first American drama to be produced professionally. On the death of Douglass, Hallam took over the management and subsequently produced (1787) the first American comedy, The Contrast, by Royall Tyler.

Hallam, Lewis (1714–56), actor and manager. His father, Adam, and brother, William, were both actors at London's Covent Garden. William later became a manager, and though he failed, he was left with enough theatrical properties and supporters to organize a company of actors for the American colonies. To this end, he appointed Lewis as head of the troupe, and the company set sail in 1752 for Virginia, where he quickly obtained the governor's permission to act and set about refurbishing the primitive auditorium he found. The company's first bill offered The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. Then Hallam moved the troupe to New York, where he had to battle formidable antitheatrical sentiment as well as rebuild another inadequate playhouse. Puritanical opposition plus the limited audiences in what were still relatively small cities forced Hallam to keep on the move. So after his New York stand he traveled with his players to Philadelphia and then to Charleston. In all of these cities he attempted to offer as broad and extended a repertory as possible, ranging from Shakespeare through the Restoration and contemporary dramatists. Some time in late 1754 or early 1755, he took the company to Jamaica, in the West Indies, where he died.

Hallam, Lewis, the elder (1714–56), English actor closely connected with the establishment of the professional theatre in the United States. Son of the actor Adam Hallam, he had already had considerable experience on the stage in London when in 1752 he took his wife and children, with a company of 10 actors, to Williamsburg, Va., where they appeared in The Merchant of Venice and Jonson's The Alchemist. A year later Hallam refurbished and reopened the Nassau Street Theatre, where his company, in the face of some opposition, appeared in a wide variety of plays. Later, after a visit to Philadelphia and Charleston, he went to Jamaica, where he died, his widow marrying David Douglass. Hallam's youngest daughter Isabella (1746–1826), left behind in England, became famous on the English stage as Mrs Mattocks.