As a student of the Department of English, MKBU, our Sundays become more interesting and creative. As part of our Sunday reading task activity this Sunday we are going to have one experiment of Breath:A short play (30sec) by Samuel Beckett. This task is assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir, in which we have to shoot one video about how we interpret the things and try to picturized Beckett's play according to our understanding. Here is the teacher's blog link fore more information,
https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2014/09/interpretation-challenge-breath.html
The Theatre of Absurd started in the early 20th Century by a group of dramatists who considered themselves intellectuals and wanted to show their reaction to the realistic dramatists of the 19thCentury who were very popular in their time. The Theatre of Absurd was a reaction against the realistic drama of the 19thCentury. Gradually this movement became very popular among the audience of the time. Martin Esslin made the form popular. He wrote a book entitled Absurd Drama which propagates the theory and principles of Absurd Drama. Many dramatists like Samuel Beckett, Eugene O’ Neil, Arthur Adamov, and EdwardAlbee etc.Wrote many absurd plays which became very popular among the audience. Although it declined in the beginning of the 21st century, even in our age there are some dramatists like Harold Pinter, who wrote Absurd plays.
At the beginning of the third act of Measure for Measure, as Claudio languishes in prison, sentenced to death for the crime of fornication, the Duke (disguised as a friar) counsels the condemned man to "reason thus with life" :
A breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences
That do this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict.
Of all of Shakespeare's comedies, Measure for Measure is the most congruent with the works of Samuel Beckett; its bitter laughter, its depiction of pitiful humanity, and its preoccupation with death resonate throughout the Irishman's works.
Breath is a absurd play written by Samuel Beckett in the 1969. It considered as a smallest play ever written. It is only about 30 second play. It also considered as experimental play. This play can be interpretated in many ways. The play consider as absurd play. Here is the video of the play 'Breath',
Transcript of the Play
Curtain.
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.
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.
Yes, there are lot many videos, in which we can see the adaptations of this play and all seems very creative and worth watching. You also watch some of the videos which are attached in Teacher's blog. Here I'm sharing my picturization of the play:
In above picturization we see that it revolves around the birth to death. There is one statement that…
"We are thrown into the meaningless universe."
It means there is nothing meaningful in our life. Everything is meaningless, pointless. What we do, what we did and what we are going to do is like nothing,it's meaningless. Is that so ???
When we listen about this question our mind is going to fight with all this things. Because we basically believers of Karma, God, Goddesses. And as a believer of that we have myths of heaven and hell. Many people believe that if they do good Karma they get good future and they will be go in heaven, if they do bad Karma they have to suffer a lot in their life and get place in hell. And the interesting fact is that nobody seen God, Goddesses and even there is no proof of heaven and hell !!! And they believe there is meaning behind their life ! But in existentialism Camus makes a rather bold claim on the meaning of life:
There isn’t one and we can’t make one either.
He argues that it is impossible for us to find a satisfying answer to the question of the meaning of life, and any attempt to impose a meaning on the universe will end in disaster, as whatever meaning we pick will be sent up later.
In the begging of the video we see one toy(dog). What is the work of toys ? Their work is to make someone happy, mostly childrens, there are also youngsters and old people who like to play with toys. So the main work of any toy is make to someone happy and delightful. The same thing happens with people also. Many people waste their life to make someone happy. They blindly doing same like toys. But we know that after some time children don't like to play with the same toy and they bought a new one, in the same way some people are gate bored and feel suffocated with the company of same person. So at the end there is no meaning of that to make someone happy. One day we all have to die then why people wasting time on this meaningless activities.
The other important symbol which I used here is the light. Light indicates happiness and sadness. As we know that light never remains On for all time and it also does not remain Off. It continues on and off. The same concept seems in our life also. Happiness and sadness is like light. We can't be happy forever in our whole life. And there is no sadness for all time in our life. It's like one goes and the second comes. They both do not exist at the same place and same time. And this is life. We have to accept the situation as it is.
In between the video i used other unnecessary stuffs, that indicates absurdity and meaningless, Which indicated the development of life and going to conclude with last breath means death. That all rubbish things are not necessary for human life but people wanted to live their life with full capacities. They wanted to show off. At the end there is nothing going to with them. In this all stuffs we can see that after death we don't know when we are going to take next birth, then why this all rubbish matter attract people ? Why society make that all rules about life ? But there is one point that,
If there is no meaning of life, then why don't we create our own meaning of life !?!
And another important thing is that,
કાલે મારવાના ડરથી આપણે આજે જીવવાનું નથી છોડતા.
There are lots of questions which is not answered. But what if the meaning of knowing that answers ? This all things are absurd. Because there isn't meaning to find the answers. We have to focus on our present, this is the moment which we can control. So the thing is that birth and death is not controlled by us, but our future our present is on our hand. We make it brighter. Not for others but for ourselves. Not to make others happy but for us to stay happy. Yes after that all there is nothing in life, everything is meaningless, but live for ourselves is far better rather than live for make others happy.
So this is my interpretation of this play.
Thank you...
