Thomas Wignell

Thomas Wignell as Darby in Dunlap's Darby's Return , around 1789

Thomas Wignell (* 1753 , † 1803 in Philadelphia ) was an American actor and theater impresario.

Life

The son of actors John and Henrietta Wignell had his first recorded appearance at the Covent Garden Theater with his father in Shakespeare's King John in the role of Prince Arthur in 1766 . He is mentioned in other Covent Garden performances as the speaker of a prologue and epilogue and in 1767 for the last time as the actor of Prince Arthur.

1774 came the co-manager of the American Company , William Hallam , to London, where he won Wignell for the company. In this or the following year he traveled to America and, due to the ban on theater performances in the course of the American Revolution, immediately on to Jamaica, where in 1775 a Wignell is named as the actor of Romeo in a performance of Romeo and Juliet (which is also called his brother William Wignell ). Performances in Princeton between 1777 and 1785 are better documented.

In the 1785–86 season he appeared with the American Company (including Hallam, John Henry , Owen Morris and Stephen Woolls ) at the John Street Theater in New York. After a trip to Philadelphia the troupe had a great success at the John Street Theater in 1878 with Royall Tyler's The Contrast , in which Wignell played the role of Yankee Jonathan. In 1789 he appeared with the company with an "Entertainment" in the Southwark Theater in Philadelphia, in 1789 in Richard Cumberland's play The Fashionable Lover .

After disputes in the American Company , Wignell left it in 1791 and founded the New Company with Alexander Reinagle , which had the Chestnut Street Theater built based on designs by his brother-in-law John Inigo Richards . The house opened in February 1794 with John O'Keeffe's play The Castle of Andalusia and Hannah Cowley's farce Who's the Dupe? and made Philadelphia the most important center of theater in the United States alongside New York.

Another theater was built by Wignell and Reinagle on Holiday Street in Baltimore, which opened in September 1794. In 1797 they took over Greenwich Street Circus in New York and opened it as a theater after renovation in the same year. The United States Theater (or The National Theater ) was opened as another house in Washington in 1800 . Due to his extensive activities as a manager, Wignell's appearances as an actor became increasingly rare during this time. On January 1, 1803, he married the actress Anne Merry , widow of the writer Robert Merry, who died in 1798 . Seven weeks later he died of complications from an infection that he contracted from bloodletting.

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• Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim, Edward A. Langhans: "A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, musicians, dancers, managers & other stage personnel in London, 1660-1800", Volume 16 SIU Press, 1993, ISBN 978 -0-8093-1803-2 , pp. 61-64
• Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. Wignell, Thomas. The Oxford Companion to American Theater. 2004.