Samuel Beckett Dublin in 1962, revising it as "Beginning To End" (1965). The show went through further revisions before Beckett directed it in Paris in 1970; MacGowran won the 1970–1971 Obie for Best Performance By an Actor when he performed the show off-Broadway as "Jack MacGowran in the Works of Samuel Beckett." Beckett wrote the radio play "Embers" and the teleplay "Eh Joe" specifically for MacGowran. The actor also appeared in various productions of "Waiting for Godot" and "Endgame," and did several readings of Beckett's plays and poems on BBC Radio; he also recorded the LP, "MacGowran Speaking Beckett" for Claddagh Records
Samuel Beckett though he in fact broke off from the existentialist movement and founded his own philosophy). Though many of the themes are similar, Beckett had little affinity for existentialism as a whole. Broadly speaking, the plays deal with the subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair, in the face of an uncomprehending and incomprehensible world. The words of Nell—one of the two characters in "Endgame" who are trapped in ashbins, from which they occasionally peek their heads to speak—can best summarize the themes of the plays of Beckett's middle period: "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,