York Guides

Mrs Keregan's New Theatre of 1744 was built over the vaulted cloisters of St. Leonard's Hospital, on land owned by the Corporation. The company played in the New Theatre - charging 2s. 6d. admission to the boxes, 2s. Od. to the pit and 1s. Od. to the gallery - in August 1744, spent the following four months in Hull and returned to York on 26 December. The manager was now Joseph Baker, who had been acting in the company and serving as scene-painter since 1739, and who took over the management when Mrs Keregan died in 1744.

The York company was soon established as a circuit company. Provincial acting troupes were of three main types: strollers who wandered haphazardly; touring companies from London, formed when Covent Garden and Drury Lane were closed during the summer; and circuit companies. Of the latter, there were those such as the Bath/Bristol company, which divided its time between the two theatres in those places; those such as Samuel Butler's Richmond company, which covered a wide area in North Yorkshire; and those such as the York company which was to follow, first under Baker and increasingly under Tate Wilkinson, a highly organised and tightly-knit circuit, using York as its headquarters. Provincial towns could not provide audiences large enough to suppport a theatre, playing three nights a week (in York, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), all the year round. Companies therefore established themselves in circuits, playing in each town on the' circuit in turn. Their visits coincided, whenever possible, with other events likely to bring a potential audience to town: Assizes, Races, Fairs. By 1747 Baker had established his circuit: his headquarters were in York, where he started the year by playing from late December or early January until May; from May until August he played in Newcastle; he then returned to York for the Summer Assize and Race Week; he was in Beverley from early August until October then went to Hull, where he stayed until the return to York in late December. This basic circuit was to be modified and enlarged by Tate Wilkinson, who succeeded Baker in the company management, so that it came to consist of York Wakefield, Doncaster and Hull. This enlarge reflecting the heyday of the circuit company, accurately be seen as a sign that the circuit particular - were no longer able to support a theatre for even four months of the year.

The schedule followed by the York company was tight, and the route enabled it to lose few performing nights, as travelling was greatly facilitated by improving road conditions in the late 18th century. Stories of the company's walking while Wilkinson rode in style in a carriage are apocryphal, and belong more to the folklore surrounding irregular strolling players than to an organization as sophisticated as the York company. Moving it was a big and expensive undertaking. Not only did all of the actors have to travel, their expenses paid by the manager, but so also did the other permanent members of the company: the Prompter, The Box-Keeper, the Leader of the Music and some of the musicians, and the Wardrobe Master and Mistress. Stage hands would be hired locally as casual labour for executing scene changes. Stage furniture and costumes, too, had to be transported. Some stock scenery was kept at each theatre in the circuit, but scenes painted specially for new plays - particularly pantomimes and, later melodramas - would need to be carried. The cost of travel was, however, not great enough to outweigh the advantages of the system.