and the company resettled in Jamaica. By that time, Hugh F. Ranking calculates that the company had performed at least 180 times, their repertoire having included fourteen of Shakespeare's plays. The Company achieved great success in Jamaica, as the island had a great interest for theatre but no professional theater had existed since they left sixteen years prior. Finding the old playhouse in Kingston not sufficient to their needs, the company successfully asked the authorities to construct the Kingston Theatre in Kingston, where they performed three or four times a week from 1775 onward: they also constructed theatres in Spanish Town and Montego Bay. David Douglass even served in the office of Master of the Revels, responsible of the representational festivities of the Governor, in 1779–80, and Lewis Hallam Jr. in 1781–1783. Old American Company After the peace of 1783, the company left Jamaica in July 1785 and returned to New York, with Lewis Hallam Jr. as the leading actor, and John Henry as his co-manager. The theatre ban was still in place, and until it was lifted, the company officially named its plays "recitals", operatic performances and similar euphemisms for theater plays. The Old American Company virtually had monopoly of theatre performances in the United States until 1790, when Thomas Wade West and John Bignall split from the Company and formed the Virginia Comedians, performing in Virginia and South Carolina, followed the next year by the foundation of the Philadelphia Company of Thomas Wignell and Owen Morris. After this, the Old American Company was essentially active in New York: first at the John Street Theatre, and from 1798 at the Park Theatre. In 1805, the Company went bankrupt. Legacy The Company enjoyed a de facto monopoly on professional theatrical performances in North America until the 1790s. In many places, they were the first professional company to perform theatre, and they founded playhouses for their use in many of the cities and towns they visited, often the very first playhouses in those places. They toured from Newport in Rhode Island to Williamsburg in Virginia, and between Annapolis, Philadelphia and New York. They founded a playhouse in New York in 1754, the 'New Theatre' playhouse in Charleston, South Carolina in 1754, the Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia in 1766, the John Street Theatre in New York in 1767, and the New Theatre in Annapolis in 1770. Managers 1752-1756: Lewis Hallam 1756-1758: Sarah