The French word répertoire had two usages. Primarily, it meant the selection of plays that a star or a company was prepared to perform in a given season. By extension, a performer might refer to a given role as part of his or her repertoire. For example, Hortense Rhéa kept Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing) in her repertoire for over a decade. A second, pejorative use of the word "repertoire" came to apply to low-budget touring companies that tended to perform melodramas, as opposed to the Shakespearean plays and other historical dramas in the repertoire of a repertory company. The hardy players who comprised a repertoire company sometimes referred to themselves by the slang term "reptile company." Tent repertoire and the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits may be considered offshoots of repertoire companies that played the small towns of middle America.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.