my story

Mike Hayhurst is an award-winning director and producer for film, video, 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 premiered in 2024 and is now available on Amazon Prime. Additional feature credits include Buck Run; The Trip to Bountiful with Cicely Tyson; and A Day Late and a Dollar Short with Whoopi Goldberg. 

He spent four years as an Associate Producer at Bill Haber’s Ostar Enterprises where he was involved with Rizzoli & Isles on TNT, Beauty and the Beast on CW, Nothing to Hide directed by Neil Patrick Harris at the Signature Theater, as well as multiple Broadway projects. 

New York theatre credits include Video Design for the Off-Broadway premiere of demons.; director of MacSPIN and Duderonomy for Emmy-Winner Seth Freeman; Some Dead Bodies; King of Bohemia (MITF, Winner: Outstanding Direction); Miró; Love Thy Neighbour. With Evening Squire Productions he is also involved in the Broadway productions Operation Mincemeat, Jamie Lloyd’s Much Ado About Nothing, and the Tony Award Winning Appropriate.

In the corporate sector, Mike has more than a decade of experience leading corporate communications, executive messaging, training content, and live events. He has been recognized for combining strategic thinking with cinematic storytelling to produce engaging content that informs, inspires, and delivers measurable business impact.

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).