Breath: The Definitive Play of Samuel Beckett

Over Christmas break my brother and I went book shopping in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. It was at Powell’s Bookstore that I purchased a volume entitled The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett, published by Grove Press.

Samuel Beckett is arguably the most important playwright of the 20th century. He is most known for a play called Waiting for Godot which premiered early in the year 1953. Thirty-five years later, in 1988, Waiting for Godot would be performed here at Wabash by the Wabash Theater. Samuel Beckett is the poster boy for a genre of theater called Theater of the Absurd. This authors of this genre stress greatly the absurdity of life and life’s pointlessness. Waiting for Godot and other Beckett plays like Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape are standard reads for those interested in 20th century theater.

Back to the book I bought. As I was skimming through the plays of this book I came across one entitled Breath. This play was interesting because there was no dialogue, no characters, and the whole thing was only about one page. So I read it. I had it finished in less than a minute. And upon completion I discovered that what I had stumbled upon was the definitive Samuel Beckett play. This play was everything that he wanted to say in roughly thirty-five seconds.

Let me set the scene for you. At the beginning of the play the curtain rises. The stage that you see before you is cluttered with junk. Literally, garbage of every kind is strewn about the stage. The lights are dim, just barely enough light to see all the garbage on the stage. There is a period of roughly five seconds where you’re just staring at the junk. You then hear someone inhale, very loudly. That person, whom you don’t see, holds his breath for about five seconds, then exhales, again very loudly. Then you stare again at the junk on the stage for about another ten seconds. And then the curtain closes. That’s it. That’s the whole play.

This may sound absurd, and it is. But this is Samuel Beckett in a nutshell. So, because this is a good synopsis of Beckett theory, let’s dive into what he’s talking (or showing rather). Again, the entire purpose of what Beckett and his literary pals are writing is to prove the absurdity of life. This idea is made manifest perfectly in this play. What Beckett is saying in this 30-second time frame is this: humanity is a breathing heap of disorganized rubbish. Humanity has potential. All of the rubbish on the stage at one time had great potential. But the rubbish (humanity) neglected to use its potential. And now it’s rubbish laying on a stage, idle and useless. It is absurd.

Now this may sound horribly pessimistic, but it’s not. Let’s look at it a little closer. Like I mentioned earlier, all of this rubbish at one time had potential. Who says it can’t gain it back? Who says humanity can’t gain its potential, its organization, back? And this is the great genius of this play that I want you to see. Beckett has crammed all of these ideas, brilliantly, into roughly 35 seconds. He is showing the absurdity of human life with the junk on the stage. But he is also, at the same time, giving us hope in the breath as if to say, “You are breathing; you can make this better. This is absurd, but not hopeless.” And not only is this message brilliant, but the style is as well. Beckett has totally deviated from the norm of playwriting. No characters, no words, one set, and it’s all garbage. Beckett busted out of the chilly tomb of his playwriting forefathers and started something new. And in this play, in this play especially, he proved that the ideas he had could work. Breath is the work of a genius: nobody but a genius could write such a play.

So, why should you Wabash men care? Here’s my answer. Like I mentioned earlier, Samuel Beckett is one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century. The work he produced challenged not only the theater world, but also the individuals who saw his plays. These plays dig deep into you and challenge you. The questions that Beckett’s plays pose are ones that should be asked and answered by one who is liberally educated. A liberally educated man will not let himself be breathing rubbish.

Wabash always fights against absurdity.

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