Hello readers! This blog is written in response to a Thinking activity assigned by Dilip Barad, Department of English, MKBU. Here, In this blog I'm trying to interpret the play "Breath" by Samuel Beckett.

Samuel Beckett, one of the most prominent playwrights of the twentieth century, wrote a thirty-second playlet for the stage that does not include actors, text, characters or drama but only stage directions. Breath (1969) is the focus and the only theatrical text examined in this study, which demonstrates how the piece became emblematic of the interdisciplinary exchanges that occur in Beckett's later writings, and of the cross-fertilisation of the theater with the visual arts. 

As Samuel Beckett’s writing progressed through the ’60s, it became even more minimal, despairing, and bleak. It was as if he was paring away as much as he could to see if the theater was left standing. Jonathan Crow mentioned how Beckett’s 1969 play Breath, for instance, “runs just a minute long and features just the sound of breathing.” There is a bit more to it than that. Not a lot more, but yes, more. Here’s the play’s script;

Curtain up

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

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

Beckett adds some notes:

• Rubbish - No verticals, all scattered and lying.
• Cry - Instant of recorded vagitus. Important that two cries be identical, switching on and off strictly synchronized light and breath.
• Breath -  Amplified recording.
• Maximum light - Not bright. If 0 = dark and 10 = bright, light should move from about 3 to 6 and back.