Breath: Interpretation challenge and sooting a video

Interpretation challenge of play Breath by Samuel Beckett  

This blog is reaponse of  Breath: Interpretation challenge & sooting a video given by Professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir.This blog is written as a task while studying Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett. 

While discussing ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’ and Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, we viewed film version of his shortest play ‘Breath’ - a thirty-seconds play. I am surprised to see that  there is the play perform in thirty- two- second. Then i read some point of this play then i understand about this short play.

Samuel Beckett:

Irish playwright, novelist, and poet Samuel Beckett was a literary legend of the 20th century. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1906, he was educated at Trinity College. During the 1930s and 1940s he wrote his first novels and short stories. During World War II, Samuel Beckett’s Irish citizenship allowed him to remain in Paris as a citizen of a neutral country. He settled in Paris and began his most prolific period as a writer. In five years, he wrote Eleutheria, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, the novels Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, and Mercier et Camier, two books of short stories, and a book of criticism.

Samuel Beckett play 'Breath'

Meaning of the Breath :

"Breathing corresponds to the first autonomous gesture of the living human being. To come into the world supposes inhaling and exhaling by oneself".

                                          -Luce Irigaray 

Breath means both life and death. In life it consider as the symbol of action. We all are habituated of breathing in life rather than death. Person doesn't realize its actually importance of living life. The play reflects the reality of human life. It reflects meaningless and Existentialism. Meaningless in the sense that people has no any purpose of living life. While waiting for something we are living life in between and the wait is for death. Breathing help us to reach for ultimate death. So Breath is the symbol of Bridge between life and death.

 

The script of the play:

CURTAIN Up

1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds.

2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum - together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold for about five seconds.

3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about five seconds. 

CURTAIN Down

My interpretation 

      

Present video prepared as a task of interpretation challenge of samuel Beckett's thirty second play which tries to capture the existential crisis. Life is futile, meaning less. It just goes on. 

Humans are reduced to machines. Their lives has turned mechanical. This is the reality which has been captured here.

 My video start with clock. Clock is symbol of life. Like life is gone with time. Then we seen many of people and he all are work like a machine. Anyone don't care about what's happening to each other life.I can say that Human life is meaningless and full of absurdity. The video of modern interpretation shows people walking like machine. People have no time, they have become more mechanical. Or say people are running, but what is meaning of their life. And then I show the whole life journey of a human being how people run for money and power for no reason. And the last conclusion of the video shows the end of life and finally I use the grave as a symbol of death. Last end say that Time is waits for no one.'

Since the day of birth to the day of death, our breathing marks the autonomy of our Being; it sustains our life and formulates our thoughts and actions.One breath only can describe agony, hope, passion, despair in the most concise manner.

Breath, what a terse and eloquent way to talk about life.Even Breath- title suggests Absurdity. We breath to live, but even Breathing is absurd. Similarly human life is also like this. This is my interpretation of Samuel Beckett play Breath.