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
Waiting for Godot attached to the word 'Godot', and the opinion of many that it means 'God'. But you must remember – I wrote the play in French, and if I did have that meaning in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I was not overtly aware of it." (Note: the French word for 'God' is 'Dieu'.) However, "Beckett has often stressed the strong unconscious impulses that partly control his writing; he has even spoken of being 'in a trance' when he writes." While Beckett stated he originally had no knowledge of Balzac's play "Mercadet ou le faiseur", whose character