Interpretation Challenge: Breath: The Shortest Play by Samuel Beckett

Hello Readers!

Here is a blog post about giving interpretation of a thirty-second play, 'Breath'. It is the shortest play written by Samuel Beckett. Martin Esslin first gave the term 'Theatre of the Absurd.' He was awarded with Nobel Prize in 1969. Few of his notable works are Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days and others.

If we look at the script of the play, it is as follows.

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

-------------------------------------

* Interpretation of the play

If one tries to interpret such a short play, it can be said that it covers much absurdity and meaningless. As we know that Samuel Beckett is associated with Theatre of Absurd, his another play, "Waiting for Godot" is also an absurd play.

The title of the play Breath is very significant. It refers to life. The script of the play contains miscellaneous rubbish. This suggests boredom and anxiety. The brief cry also signifies life but it also suggest disgust, anguished, stressed, haphazard, pessimist and gloomy thinking. The play is very short so, this also significantly suggests that life is very short. All we have to do is just breath and cry. Crying for status, power, money, recognition, attachment, acceptance and what not. The beginning part of script suggest birth, as the light inspires and grows. The end part suggests death as the light and the sound gradually decreases. But the setup is very rubbish, so it suggests that life is nothing but a rubbish stuff, spread hither and thither. No matter how human tries to decorate the life, it will remain rubbish and coarse. This also relates with Albert Camus's Myth of Sisyphus.

* Picturization of the play

The script is very short and perhaps it is written for the dramatization purpose. So, I've tried to shoot a video following the original script and also used crying and breathing sound.

A short video describing the scene is also embedded here.

Samuel Beckett's ‘Breath’ by Rohit Vyas

If you find this video interesting then I suggest to visit the blog link given below.

https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2014/09/interpretation-challenge-breath.html

WHAT’S BEHIND THE SCENES?

Let's get some technical info about how I shot and edited this short play.

* Shot with mobile camera, tripod and headphones. For more information about ICT tools which I use, click here.

* Used steel glass to generate more deeper and hollow crying sound. Here is a demo image clicked after recording the audio.

* For repairing purpose, I have a container full of mechanical tools like screws, nuts, bolts, wall-plugs, visors, nails, rivets and many small articles. I have used these tools as prop for the play. This use of screws and other sharp objects are used metaphorically to show absurdity and coarseness. Here the sharpness also makes a curious statement that life if full of pain and agony.

Now, lets see the post-production work.

Click on the images to get closer look.

1. OpenShot Video Editor

I've used this opensource video editing tool that allows editing, cropping, merging image files, audio files and video files altogether. No license or payment required. This software gives 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p to 4K video exporting resolutions. Here is the screenshot below.

2. Audacity

It is the free audio editing tool. It is used for editing, cropping and merging the multiple audio tracks. I also applied noise reduction effect to sounds. I've cut unnecessary honking sounds coming from nearby road. Though this software doesn't support Advansed Audio Codec - AAC audio format of recording which is the only minus point.

3. Online Audio Converters

There are many. And I also select a random converter. Here I've selected ZAMZAR online conversion website to convert AAC audio track to MP3.

All in all, this entire process took 5 hours in recording the video and audio (many retakes were taken) editing and mixing many files for final video, and uploading the finalized version to YouTube. I have learnt a lot many things from this project.

Thank You!