Eh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author’s fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May. The first English broadcast went out eventually on BBC2 (4 July 1966) with Jack MacGowran, for whom the play was specifically written, playing Joe (originally ‘Jack’ at the start of the first draft) and Siân Phillips as Voice. Beckett has asked for Billie Whitelaw but she was tied up with another acting commitment. Alan Gibson directed but with Beckett in attendance. At least thirteen versions have been preserved on tape making it far and away Beckett’s most produced teleplay. It was first published in Eh Joe and Other Writings (Faber, 1967) – although the version published is closer to Typescript 3, mentioned above, than the version as broadcast.
Author
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour. Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career. Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1984 he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.
