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Indeed, drama critics are the great problematic for the cultural historian reviewing theatrical history. What is one to make of drama criticism, as it is held in near total contempt, save for a few of its practitioners? Brown’s complex career amplifies this discourse.
Earlier material culture entered into this discussion. And one notes the (unfortunate) recurring use of the term materiality in the discourse of national identity and the performer. Thus, one finds pertinent a consideration of nineteenth-century portrait medals of performers. Contrast the essentially anonymous nature of the performed commemoration today; I refer to the plethora, if not the ubiquity, of the “awards show.” The commemoration here is virtually anonymous, though, because the award itself is generic. Save, I would argue, for the only truly iconic award: the Oscar, designed by Cedric Gibbons in 1928.17 (Yet, even this “icon” is faceless.) The portrait medal, by contrast, is a recapitulation in metal of the essence of the public persona of the performer and, by extension, what the culture of the nation wishes to celebrate officially. This is particularly relevant in late Imperial Austria. The striking of a medal was a signal event in the establishment of a performer’s respectability and reputation. On a mass scale, the series of photographs, widely disseminated on postcards, of Burgtheater actors taking their ease in a book-lined study fulfilled a similar function.
One of the most important actors to emerge from late Imperial Austria is Alexander Moissi who embodies the inherent contradictions and anomalies of national identity and the modern artist. Moissi was one of the great international stars of the early twentieth century, one of the last actors who was able to attract crowds who could not understand the language he spoke. Nonetheless, his international reputation did him no good after the Anschluss; the suspicion that he was Jewish or the fact that as an ethnic Albanian Hitler’s Reich considered him one of the