Dead Poets Live
Autumn Journal
London
Dead Poets Live are delighted to present Autumn Journal, Louis MacNeice’s thrillingly intimate and powerful dramatic monologue. Featuring Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment; Normal People).
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.
He most recently filmed the lead role of Silas Reade opposite Esme Creed-Miles in The Doll Factory, a TV adaptation of the bestselling novel by Elizabeth Macneal directed by Sacha Polak and Cathy Brady for Paramount+ and Buccaneer.
He was most recently seen in the BBC1 drama The Sixth Commandment written by Sarah Phelps, alongside Timothy Spall and Anne Reid, and the feature film Lakelands directed by Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney, in which he plays the lead role of Cian opposite Danielle Galligan.
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 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.