Thomas Wade West, Theatrical Impressario, 1790-1799

Abstract

T THIS is one of the lost stories which belongs to the social history of the South. It is the story of Thomas Wade West, an actor-manager of the eighteenth century, who, successfully surmounting the innumerable difficulties which stood in the way of any artistic endeavor in the small and scattered communities of the agricultural south, gathered together a company of actors who were' superior to any in the country. With these he toured, the year around, giving audiences from Baltimore to Savannah a taste of what was perhaps the best provincial theatre in the English speaking world and certainly the best in the United States.' Mr. West built five theatres and commissioned Benjamin Henry Latrobe to design a sixth with which he planned to replace the theatre he had purchased in Richmond, Virginia. Although he himself lived only nine years after coming to the United States, he established the southern theatre circuit on such a firm foundation that his wife and, after her death, actors with whom he had shared some of the responsibilities of management, were able to continue giving performances of the same high caliber that was characteristic of his own work. The circuit which he founded thus endured, prospering, from 1790 until i8i2. It was brought to an end. at that time by the deaths, within a year, of two of its three managers; the disastrous fire which consumed the Richmond theatre, killing seventy people; and the War of i8i2. Thomas Wade West was forty-five years old when he landed in Philadelphia in I790. With him were his wife Margaretta, his children,