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 Days" (1961). These plays—which are often considered, rightly or wrongly, to have been instrumental in the so-called "Theatre of the Absurd"—deal in a darkly humorous way with themes similar to those of the roughly contemporary existentialist thinkers. The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin in a book of the same name; Beckett and "Godot" were centerpieces of the book. Esslin argued these plays were the fulfilment of Albert Camus's concept of "the absurd"; this is one reason Beckett is often falsely labeled as an existentialist (this is based on the assumption that Camus was an existentialist,