After the revolution ended and New York had been evacuated, Dennis Ryan, who had made his Tory sympathies evident in his New York performances, may have felt that the returning American citizenry would not patronize the productions of his company. Ryan left New York and attempted to reopen the Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia in November 1783. His petition to the Pennsylvania Assembly was tabled, however, when a group of Quakers opposed the repeal of the law against theatrical entertainments. Ryan led his actors back to Baltimore in early December (by way of Richmond, Virginia, where they opened the first theatre in that city; as well as Charleston and other locations in the south), where they played for several more seasons. Ryan, whose poor health evidently forced his company to disband soon after their last performance in Baltimore on September 17, 1785, died in March 1786. Many of the actors with the Baltimore troupe eventually returned to their former professions, but Mr. Shakespeare, for one, continued his career as a professional actor in Charleston, South Carolina, with a new company in 1786.

In January 1784, Lewis Hallam, Jr., attempted to succeed where Dennis Ryan had failed. Hallam, who had begun acting in America as a child in 1752 and had spent the Revolution in Jamaica with the American Company, tried to secure permission from the Pennsylvania Assembly to offer a series of performances in Philadelphia.