Fishing for Haiku
 

In 2026 I finished directing Fishing for Haiku, which is built around Paul Wiancko’s 'American Haiku', a beautiful, vivid and exhilarating work for viola and cello. The show is touring in Autumn 2026 and Spring 2027 - please contact MishMash Productions to book a performance.  
 

In Fishing for Haiku, the performers go “fishing” for haiku poems, discovering them among the audience before bringing them to life through music, text and movement. Alongside Wiancko’s music, the two performers share stories and tunes from their own homelands and family histories — France and Scotland — inviting the audience to connect with them not only as musicians, but as people.
 

What begins as a calm and gentle fishing trip gradually grows stranger and wilder, culminating in a folk tale about the devil making people dance endlessly. The show ends in a moment of quiet magic, as the individual pieces of the haiku “fish” are strung together to create one whole fish: a playful image of how fragments of language, music and memory can come together to make something complete.

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The show was fully devised with the performers in the room (Joanna Star k and Suzanne Godet, with design from Bryony McCombie-Smith, physical theatre input from Tom Curzon and beautiful Haikus written by Joanna in repsonse to Wiancko's music.