Dead Poets Live
Autumn Journal
Dublin
Dead Poets Live bring their setting of Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal, starring BAFTA & IFTA-nominated actor Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment; Normal People), to Dublin.
The autumn of 1938 was, if you were British, arguably the most frightening moment of the twentieth century. Louis MacNeice was a poet from Northern Ireland, turning thirty-one and working as a lecturer in London and Autumn Journal, his masterpiece, describes his response to a season of intense anxiety and uncertainty. It’s a diary poem, which frets and argues with itself and blends the personal – a love affair, the daily round in London, the leaves falling and Christmas coming – with the overwhelming and terrifying inevitability of an approaching war. There’s no other poem quite like Autumn Journal, and few which communicate that mixture of dread, distraction and incidental beauty which seems so uncannily descriptive of our own present moment.
Performers
Éanna Hardwicke is an actor and writer from Cork.
His most recent role for screen is Roy Keane opposite Steve Coogan in the upcoming sports film Saipan. In 2024 he was also to be seen in A Very Royal Scandal, alongside Ruth Wilson and Michael Sheen. Earlier that year he delighted Donmar audiences as Semyon Epikhodov in The Cherry Orchard.
His performance in BBC1 drama The Sixth Commandment, written by Sarah Phelps, alongside Timothy Spall and Anne Reid, was nominated for a BAFTA. His performance in the feature film Lakelands directed by Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney, in which he plays the lead role of Cian opposite Danielle Galligan, saw him nominated for an IFTA.
His short film At Arm’s Length, co-written with Tom Monahan and directed by Brian Deane premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2022.
Further credits include the role of Sebastian in season 2 of Fate: The Winx Saga for Netflix; the part of Robbie in the Screen Ireland-backed feature film The Sparrow, directed by Michael Kinirons; three seasons of the TV series Smother alongside Seána Kerslake and Ayoola Smart, directed by Dathaí Keane for the BBC & RTÉ; and the role of young Doug opposite Freya Mavor in the feature film Joan Verra directed by Laurent Larivière and starring Isabelle Huppert.
Further screen roles include Silas Reade in The Doll Factory, Rob in Normal People directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald; Krypton directed by Metin Hüseyin for DC Ent. & Syfy; and the role of the Boy alongside Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg in the feature film Vivarium, which premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week 2019.
