Douglass was a member of the British Theatre Company of John Moody, which became the first permanent theater company in Jamaica when they came to Kingston in 1746; they were given their first permanent playhouse in "New Theatre" or King's Store on Harbour Street seven years later.
Douglass built the Society Hill Theatre in Philadelphia in 1759, with his company performing there for six months before protests halted theatrical works there.
[2] He chose to stage The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey at the Southwark on April 24, 1767, becoming the first production in the United States of a play written by an American.
The Old American Company under Douglass successfully asked the colonial government for a new theater building, and the Kingston Theatre was inaugurated on the Parade area in 1775.
David Douglass served in the office of 'Master of the Revels', responsible of the representational festivities of the Governor, in 1779–80.