“People Eat Their Dinner, Just Eat Their Dinner…”: Food Discourse in Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-53
Author(s):  
Natalia Vysotska
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
Food Products ◽  
Anton Chekhov ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
New Drama ◽  
Three Sisters ◽  
Fernand Braudel

Abstract The essay sets out to explore the functions of food discourse in the plays Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov and Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley. Based on the critically established continuity between the two plays, the essay looks at the ways the dramatists capitalize on food imagery to achieve their artistic goals. It seemed logical to discuss the alimentary practices within the framework of everyday life studies (Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schütz, Fernand Braudel, Bernhard Waldenfels and others), moved to the forefront of literary scholarship by the anthropological turn in the humanities. Enhanced by a semiotic approach, this perspective enables one to understand food products and consumption manners as performing a variety of functions in each play. Most obviously, they are instrumental in creating the illusion of “everydayness” vital for new drama. Then, for Chekhov, food comes to epitomize the spiritless materiality of contemporary life, while in Henley’s play it is predominantly used, in accordance with the play’s feminist agenda, as a grotesque substitute for the lack of human affection. Relying upon the fundamental cultural distinction between everyday and non-everyday makes it possible to compare representations of festive occasions in the two plays seen through the gastronomical lens of “eating together.” Despite substantial differences, the emphases on alimentary practices in the plays serve to realize the inexhaustible dramatic potential inherent in the minutiae of quotidian life.

scholarly journals GASTRONOMICAL CODE AS ELEMENT OF EVERYDAY LIFE POETICS IN DRAMA TEXTS (ANTON CHEKHOV’S THREE SISTERS AND BETH HENLEY’S CRIMES OF THE HEART)

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Natalia Vysotska
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
New Drama ◽  
Three Sisters

The paper sets out to explore the functions of food discourse in the plays Three Sisters by Anton Chekhovand Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley. Based on the critically established continuity between the two plays, the paperlooks at the ways the dramatists capitalize on food imagery to achieve their artistic goals. It seemed logical to discuss thealimentary practices within the framework of everyday life studies, moved to the forefront of literary scholarship by theanthropological turn in the humanities. Enhanced by semiotic approach, this perspective enables one to understand foodproducts and consumption manners as performing a variety of functions in each play. Most obviously, they are instrumentalin creating the illusion of «everydayness» vital for new drama. Then, for Chekhov, food comes to epitomize thespiritless materiality of contemporary life, while in Henley’s play it is predominantly used, in accordance with the play’sfeminist agenda, as a grotesque substitute for the lack of human affection. Relying upon the fundamental cultural distinctionbetween everyday and non-everyday makes it possible to compare representations of festive occasions in the twoplays seen through the gastronomical lens of «eating together». Despite substantial differences, the emphases on alimentarypractices in the plays serve to realize the inexhaustible dramatic potential inherent in the minutiae of quotidian life.

scholarly journals Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Biomechanics and Boris Zakhava's Educational Work

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 58-74
Author(s):  
Herman Marchenko
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Independent Practice ◽  
Educational Work ◽  
Comprehensive Development ◽  
The Difference ◽  
New Drama ◽  
Fantastic Realism ◽  
Moscow Art Theatre ◽  
Konstantin Stanislavski

The article deals with two different approaches to training actors. One of them is Stanislavski’s system, and the other is Meyerhold’s biomechanics. Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko are reformers of the Russian theater. As the Art Theater founders, they understood that the emergence of a new drama would require a completely different approach to working with actors and a different design of the stage space. With regard to new performances, it became possible to pose critical social questions related to everyday life before the viewer. Therefore, it was logical that the director's profession became very important. Working on his system, Stanislavski paid great attention to the need for an actor’s comprehensive development. Many wonderful actors who attended his acting school were among the students of this great theater director. Vsevolod Meyerhold was one of them. However, the latter chose his direction and began to engage in staging performances actively and search for new means of expression, having come to an absolute convention on the stage. Meyerhold created his method of working with an actor, known as biomechanics, in the theatrical environment. The principle of this approach is the opposite of Stanislavski's system. With all the difference in views on the theater, in the early stages of Meyerhold's independent practice, Konstantin Stanislavski offered him the opportunity to cooperate, which led Vsevolod Meyerhold to the Studio on Povarskaya Street in Moscow. Evgeny Vakhtangov was another student of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko. At the request of Stanislavski, Vakhtangov was engaged in educational work in the studio of Moscow Art Theatre. Unlike Meyerhold, he thoroughly mastered the system and then created his theatrical direction called fantastic realism. Vakhtangov's legacy was preserved thanks to the activities of his students, among whom was Boris Zakhava. He turned to Meyerhold for help and spent several seasons with the master, gaining invaluable experience, including revealing the features of biomechanics in practice. Boris Zakhava remained faithful to Vakhtangov’s principles and continued his teacher’s work at the Shchukin Theater Institute.

scholarly journals "GENRE TRADITIONALISM AND SEARCH FOR NEW FORMS IN VALERY BRUSOV’S DRAMA"

2018 ◽  
pp. 215-231
Author(s):  
OLGA STRASHKOVA
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
New Drama

"In V.Brusov’s works drama is presented by all genres and various genre forms: antique tragedy, Shakespeare’s tragedy, a comedy based on parody of a situation and a form, farce, “actual” drama in various historical mystifications, scientific, fantastic and mystic reminiscences, and in the alleged traditions of social dramas of everyday life, innovative forms of “Maeterlinck's drama” and “new drama”, as well as by dramaturgical miniatures: a sketch, a scene, an event, a miracle, farce."

‘Making known’ or ‘counting our children’?

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Young People ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Complex Networks ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Kwazulu Natal ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
Provision Of Services ◽  
Modes Of Engagement

The article explores how regimes of documentation, quantification, evidence, and accountability have come to shape encounters between program implementers, researchers, young people, and caregivers in one locality in northeastern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Rather than simply critiquing the overemphasis on counting and accounting in global health, I examine the effects of these processes on the provision of services to young people and families. For those whose lives had been systematically excluded from view, processes of form filling could in fact be construed as services in themselves. Further, encounters structured around form filling could work to facilitate other modes of engagement, centered on the construction of forms of recognition, reciprocity, and obligation, and mediated by complex networks of patronage and dependence. Drawing on these findings, the article describes how local histories and contemporary life experiences can shape the ways in which technologies of global health are taken up, and their effects on everyday life.

The Traje De Tehuana as National Icon: Gender, Ethnicity, and Fashion in Mexico

2014 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-314
Author(s):  
Francie Chassen-López
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
National Icon ◽  
Fernand Braudel

“Is fashion in fact such a trifling thing? Or is it, as I prefer to think, rather an indication of deeper phenomena—of the energies, possibilities, demands, andjoie de vivreof a given society, economy and civilization?” So wrote Fernand Braudel inThe Structures of Everyday Life.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Food Products ◽  
White Coat ◽  
Food Science ◽  
Processed Food ◽  
Scientific Experiment ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
People Today

First, I have a confession to make. I am a food scientist. I have spent a large part of my life in a white coat, or working with students in white coats, studying, analyzing, and creating food products, subjecting them to a variety of processes and tests to see what happens, and occasionally, very occasionally, even tasting them. This is my passion, and to me is one of the most exciting types of scientific research in which I could be engaged, where the challenges are complex and really interesting, but in every case relate in some way to something central to everyday life. Food science is probably the only field in which a scientific experiment can lead to a change that can have a measurable impact you can point to on a shelf or plate within a matter of days. Also, it is great to work in a field of science where sometimes, if your experiment doesn’t work, you can at least eat it! However, I accept that, for many people, this is not food. Food comes on a plate. Food is an art. Food is an experience. Food is pleasure. Food is life. Food is not something to handle with a white coat on, not something to deconstruct in test tubes, and certainly not anything to do with chemicals. Definitely not anything to do with chemicals. Food is not science; food is art. People today know what they want from the food they buy. They want a wide variety of safe, natural, convenient, nutritious, great-tasting food. They likewise know what they do not want. They don’t want processed food, they don’t want chemicals in their food, they don’t want preservatives. This presents those who provide that food with great challenges as, to deliver the things consumers want, they often have to avoid the very tools they have traditionally used to achieve these goals. In this book, I want to explore the contradictions at the heart of our understanding of food, which arise in part from the fact that food is both science and art.

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