Interpretation Challenge: Breath: The Shortest Play by Samuel Beckett

Here is a blog post about giving an 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 Nobel Prize in 1969. A few of his notable works are Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, and other 

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

CURTAIN Up:-

1. Faint light on a 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:-

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 suggests 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 breathe and cry. Crying for status, power, money, recognition, attachment, acceptance, and whatnot. The beginning part of the script suggests birth, as the light inspires and grows. The end part suggests death as the light and the sound gradually decrease. But the setup is very rubbish, so it suggests that life is nothing but rubbish stuff, spread hither and thither. No matter how human tries to decorate the life, it will remain rubbish and coarse.

Samuel Beckett's ‘Breath’ by Asari Bhavyang :-

The picturization revolves around the journey of Human beings from Birth to Death and in between these two polls the activities which are done.

The video begins with the clock which shows the importance of time and the clock is a symbol of human life, as when A birth of a person is seen as the arrival of happiness in other people's life while here it sounds like that Birth is so cheerful. Because now we are alone in this purposeless universe. According to Existentialism "We are thrown into the Meaningless Universe."

At the end of the video again there is a Bottle that falls down and again a faint cry which symbolizes the death of a person. So, It is a journey of human life from birth to death and in between what is the purpose of human life.

In between and end the collection of rubbish things are the different phases of development of life. 

The clock symbolizes Time. Between birth and death, we have some allocated time within which we have to live our life. And there is a time that binds every human action. 

Another significant symbol used in the rubbish stuff is Gift and spray. Now the Gift and spray symbolize the materialistic nature of a Human. Humans invest their whole life to earn a good salary and get money to live life. Within that one cannot survive. But in the end, if we count then it seems like we have wasted our whole life doing nothing except running behind money. There are many things which used in video like color bottles symbolize our childhood where we used to play, there is another phase of learning life lessons and getting knowledge which is reflected through the shattered pens in the video. Then one most important thing which highlighted staple through use sheets of paper to fasten them together. In the same way through life, we spend our days and nights in making our relationship stronger with people. And also time and again we motivate ourselves by doing something new creative in life. So, these are some of the things which are used in the video which denotes various phases in Human Life.