UPON A STALE SUN | ZOE MCWHINNEY | Physical Fest 2026

I : THE HORSEFLY

The flow of one shot cinema (pretty much), this is the beginning like when you open the book and start reading the words – except visually 

II : THE CITY

The story of the four towers. 

III : THE CAFE 

Someone was sitting in the cafe. There’s a zenith television flickering up under the ceiling corner. And then, the ending. 

Zoë McWhinney, have recently won the internationally renowned festival Clin d’ Oeil’s Sign Slam championships in Reims, and as a British Sign Language (BSL) poet, was shortlisted in the nationally prestigious Forward Poetry Prize 2026

The brainchild between Mime and Sign Language, Visual Vernacular (a.k.a. VV) is a kinetic, cinematic storytelling performance involving everything from the knee, waist and up. VV needs only a small area of the stage to perform great silent visual epics, akin to sign language.