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While on the surface, an eighteenth-century enthusiasm for a wax sculptor may seem to have little overt connection to either the development of American performance culture or notions of American patriotism, Patience Wright - Quakeress, sculptor, performer, and political activist managed to transform her unusual profession into performances that challenged transadantic notions of gender and class, as well as national identity.1 Scholars of theatre history have paid litde attention to Wright's career, although historian Jay Fliegelman mentions her in his discussion of debated notions of "natural theatricality" that emerged with the new nation.2 Wright merits investigation as a woman whose performances excited international attention, and whose politicization of her art eventually forced her to flee to France for safety.
Much of Wright's fascination and significance lies in her lower class, gendered identity, and her status as a religious outsider. An engraving from the 1 November 1775 issue of The London Magazine shows the matronly wax sculptor Patience Wright clothed in a voluminous dress, her hair demurely covered by a bonnet, face turned in profile to the right as she gazes off into the distance. She presents the very picture of middleaged female respectability, just as a widowed Quaker visiting England from the American colonies might wish to be seen. Yet as the viewer studies the image, he or she sees that just below Wright's gaze, a man's torso and head is visible. His body is wrapped in her skirts in such a way that he appears to be wearing a coat, his head covered by a wig. Presumably, the image is meant to capture the climactic moment in Wright's English performances, when she ceased her narrative and pulled the completed bust she had been molding from wax, warmed between her thighs, from below her skirt, revealing it to the audience. The costuming of the male figure, as well as its expressive face (more expressive than Wright's), however, makes it look as if the male figure is alive, supporting Wright's weight, and that the two are engaged in an all together different activity than the production of art.
The dichotomy illustrated in this picture, between the silent, still matron on top and the far more active and unusual lower half of the picture, can be taken...