Breath (play)

"Breath" is a notably short stage work by Samuel Beckett. An altered version was first included in Kenneth Tynan's revue "Oh! Calcutta!", at the Eden Theatre in New York City on June 16, 1969. The UK premiere was at the Close Theatre Club in Glasgow in October 1969; this was the first performance of the text as written. “The first accurate publication appeared in "Gambit" 4.16 (1969): 5–9, with a manuscript facsimile.” [Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) "The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett", (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 74]

ynopsis

Even for Beckett, whose later plays are often extremely short, "Breath" is an unusually terse work. Its length can be estimated from Beckett's detailed instructions in the script to be about 25 seconds. It consists of the sound of “an instant of recorded vagitus” [Beckett, S., "Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett" (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 211] (a birth-cry), followed by an amplified recording of somebody slowly inhaling and exhaling accompanied by an increase and decrease in the intensity of the light. There is then a second identical cry, and the piece ends. No people are seen on stage, but Beckett states that it should be "littered with miscellaneous rubbish." He did specify however that there were to be “no verticals”, the rubbish was to be “all scattered and lying.”

History

“Tynan had asked [Beckett] … to write a brief skit for an erotic review, and Beckett agreed when he heard that Edna O'Brien., Jules Feiffer, Leonard Melfi, John Lennon and Tynan himself were planning to contribute. All the contributions were to be listed anonymously on the programme so that none of the contributors would be identified with his writing.” [Bair, D., "Samuel Beckett: A Biography" (London: Vintage, 1990), p 640]

Beckett sent the text of the play on a postcard to Tynan. At the first production, his staging was altered to make the work fit in with the somewhat risque nature of the revue by adding naked bodies to the rubbish, suggesting that the work was about sexual intercourse. “In one of his few displays of public anger, Beckett called Tynan a ‘liar’ and a ‘cheat’, prompting Tynan to send a formal notice through his lawyers that he was not responsible for the travesty, which he claimed was due to others … Beckett decided the incident wasn’t worth the argument and dropped it.” [Bair, D., "Samuel Beckett: A Biography" (London: Vintage, 1990)', p 640]

“85 million people saw 1314 performances making it easily Beckett’s most viewed play.” [Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) "The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett", (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 73]

“John Calder claims that Tynan commissioned it; but Ruby Cohn disputes this, saying that SB had recited it to her years before, and that Calder published a fair copy but not the original, which SB had written on the paper tablecloth of a café.” [Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) "The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett", (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 73]

Interpretation

Modern critics have tended to see "Breath" as being about the archetypal Beckett subject: the relative shortness and pointlessness of life itself. “The simplicity is symmetrical recalling Pozzo's poignant comment” [Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) "The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett", (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 74] in "Waiting for Godot": "They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant and then it is night once more." [http://www.samuel-beckett.net/Penelope/Pozzo_Lucky.html#Quasimodo] Others have been less charitable, thinking of it as a weak joke.

“The gaze is an integral factor in much of Beckett's later drama, including his "Film" (1963) and television dramas, which are, of course, highly visual forms. The prototype for his dramatic use of the gaze was the ‘play’ "Breath".” [ Guest, M., ‘Beckett and Foucault: Some Affinities’ in "Central Japan English Studies", English Literary Society of Japan, Chubu, Vol. 15 (1996) pp 55-68] “ [I] t is now clear that its main interest is that, in the wake of "Play", it points forward to the miniature dramas of the seventies. This is not so much because of its actual brevity, as because of its meticulous interplay of light, sound and silence, its balanced variations in lighting strength, its formal symmetry, and its use of amplified sound adopted later in "Not I" and "Footfalls" (live) and in "That Time" (recorded).” [Knowlson, J. and Pilling, J., "Frescoes of the Skull" (London: John Calder, 1979), p 128]

Beckett himself described the piece “in a version of the French translation "Souffle", as a ‘farce in five acts’. Its humour stems largely from the way it deliberately fails to satisfy audience expectations.” [Knowlson, J. and Pilling, J., "Frescoes of the Skull" (London: John Calder, 1979), p 127] James Knowlson believes that Beckett “intended his sketch to be an ironic comment on what was to follow in [Tynan’s] show.” [Knowlson, J., "Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett" (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 566]

"Beckett on Film"

In the filmed version directed by artist Damien Hirst as part of the "Beckett on Film" project “the debris features hospital and medical waste.” [Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) "The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett", (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 74] Hirst says: “When I was asked to direct this film, I read the text and thought it was incredibly precise and strict. While preparing to shoot, I kept reading the text over and over and what focused me was Beckett’s direction ‘hold for about 5 seconds’. That was when I realised that Beckett had this massive sense of humour.” [Hirst, D., "Beckett on Film" souvenir book, p 27]

References