Stenborg Company

When the Swedish troupe, active on the theater since 1737, was fired in 1753 and replaced with the French Du Londel Troupe, half of the staff left for the countryside to work as a traveling theater company under Peter Lindahl and Johan Bergholtz, while the rest remained in Stockholm in an attempt to start a new theatre.

In 1756, The actor Petter Stenborg applied and was given permission to lead a theater company in the city of Stockholm, and between 1758 and for twenty years forward, he performed as the director of a troupe of native actors in both Stockholm, in temporary locales, and touring the country, mostly in Finland, first in companionship with the tight-rope-walker von Carl Fredrik von Eckenberg; when the troupe visited Åbo in 1761, it was probably the first time a theatre troupe visited Finland.

The Stenborg troupe is most known for its activity in Stockholm, where it preserved a Swedish-speaking theater during a period when the French culture otherwise dominated the Swedish stage.

The theatre did not have a good reputation among the upper-classes; the actors were from "the jail, soldiers, alcoholized lawyers, servants, and washing-women", the costumes were from rag shops and the music from public-houses, (where they often performed), and the plays was described as vulgar; these judgements were given by members of the upper classes, who preferred French theater, but the Stenborg Company was much appreciated by the public, who could not understand the French language at Bollhuset.

At the performance of Jeppe på Berget by Holberg in 1763, the theatre on Kindstugatan, it was noted that the locale had places for three hundred spectators.

In 1771, king Gustav III of Sweden fired the French theater company, and the Swedish actors, led by Petter Stenborg, saw their chance and asked to perform a play at the opening of the parliament of 1772.