my story

Mike Hayhurst is an award-winning director and producer for film and theatre. Born and raised in the UK, he co-founded Evening Squire Productions in 2016 and has created multiple award-winning short films including BEAT; Cook With the Heart (currently in development as a feature film); Upside Down Plain Face; 15 Down; Oma starring Lynn Cohen; and The Pits, a live-action puppet short about a lonely avocado in NYC that Frank Oz called “really good and very sweet.” Most recently, his proof-of-concept mockumentary about professional Finish hobbyhorser Ava Keppihevonen went viral and generated over 14.5M views.

His directorial feature debut And Through the Portal We Go is slated to premiere in 2024. Additional feature credits include Buck Run; The Trip to Bountiful with Cicely Tyson; and A Day Late and a Dollar Short with Whoopi Goldberg.

Previously, he spent four years as an Associate at Bill Haber’s Ostar Enterprises (Rizzoli & Isles, TNT; Beauty and the Beast, CW; Nothing to Hide directed by Neil Patrick Harris at Signature Theater; various Broadway projects).

New York theatre credits include the Off-Broadway premiere of demons.; MacSPIN and Duderonomy for Emmy-Winner Seth Freeman; Some Dead Bodies; King of Bohemia (MITF, Winner: Outstanding Direction); Miró; Love Thy Neighbour. Prior to moving to the US, he was the Youth Theatre Director for Royal & Derngate Theatres where he programmed and ran weekly theatre programs for over 200 young people between the ages of 2-21. He was Assistant Director to Rupert Goold on his productions of Hamlet; Faustus; and Paradise Lost; an Associate Director for R.I.P.P. (Norway); and Crackers? (Singapore and UK). He was also Plinther #733 in One & Other by Anthony Gormley (Trafalgar Square, London).