dokhuis

Omid Kheirabadi led a performance workshop where strangers created improvised pieces about dialogue, care, and healing. In just a few hours, they explored how trust can grow between strangers and how dialogue can transform when approached as shared creation. You can read his reflection on it - in English- underneath. In Dokhuis leidde Omid Kheirabadi een performance-workshop waarin onbekenden samen improviseerden rond dialoog, zorg en heling. In enkele uren ontstonden onverwachte momenten van vertrouwen en verbinding, waarin dialoog zichtbaar werd als een gezamenlijke creatieve kracht. Lees hieronder zijn reflectie- in het Engels

Reflection on the Performance Session at Dokhuis by Omid Kheirabadi

 

Introduction

 

When Hosein asked me to join this program, part of the Dialoogavond (Dialogue Nights) organized at Dokhuis on June 9, 2025, we talked about the main theme of the series: different ways in which dialogues can take place, and exploring alternative ways of meeting one another. Alongside this, one of the underlying themes of the program was to reflect on care and healing.

 

For me personally, bringing people together in a workshop already constitutes an act of care. Not simply the fact of gathering, but keeping participants engaged, making sure they can get the most out of their time and energy. That, for me, is an act of care carried by the organizer, and that’s the first underlying element. Later, I will reflect on how healing also becomes part of this way of working, but as an introduction, I must say: for me, the act of performing itself already contains transformation. To step into a space, to hold it, and to present something to others via body, sound, and movement is a powerful position to have. The performer is not only holding space for the audience, but is also being transformed by the act of performing. This transformation happens even before reaching the second layer of reception by the audience.

 

My workshops build on this idea: bringing together people who may not know each other and creating an environment where they dare to perform for one another, experiencing transformation in a caring space where nothing is right or wrong, and everything is allowed to unfold. I am not an expert in healing, but I believe such an environment already introduces healing elements: a space where people can share and express without judgment, and where they receive immediate responses and reflections from others in the group.

 

So when I was asked to organize this Dialogue Night, I thought: why not dedicate time and attention to dialogue itself as a phenomenon? Dialogue was already the overarching theme of the series, and it seemed interesting to explore how people feel when starting a conversation with a stranger, which is something that could be directly enacted in the workshop itself. This created two layers: first, participants met each other for the first time in the workshop setting; and second, they created performances about what it means for a few strangers to meet. Something fascinating happens in this doubling: the strangers (the workshop participants) must first get to know one another and build trust to create something together. This is the first layer of co-creation, which happens horizontally, shared between them. Then they experience working under the pressure of time, creating a performance about a few characters (their personas in the performative setting) meeting for the first time. In this mirroring of life and performance, the question was not only what dialogue is, but how we rehearse it in real time. This, I thought, can allow us to reflect on what such a brief encounter can mean, and how real or deep that connection might feel. In a way, they were not acting in the conventional sense, but performing themselves, with the mask or added layer of performance they created. So in that sense, already, the layer of writer, or creator, has been replaced by the performers themselves, as they are improvising and doing this together, and the results became a way of answering the research questions in a performative mode.

 

At the beginning of the workshop, everyone was asked to answer three questions, writing their responses on small pieces of paper:

1. What is your biggest fear in talking to someone you don’t know?
2. When do you feel most alienated in a conversation?
3. When do you feel there is enough space to speak honestly in a group?

I designed these questions to touch on three different layers of dialogue. The first was about first encounters. I am fascinated by the raw and random quality of such moments where so much can happen, and usually does. I wanted to know what fears participants carry into those encounters. Personally, my fear would be not being accepted or appreciated in the conversation. When I initiate a dialogue, I wonder: how will the other react? And if the reaction is not positive, that can become a source of fear for me.

The second question moved into a different setting: familiar groups, such as family dinners or conversations among close friends. Even in those settings, it is possible to feel alienated. It happens to me sometimes, when I feel I have nothing to add, or that I am in the wrong place, out of sync with the group. I was curious about when others feel that sense of disconnection.

The third question was about the conditions that make it possible to speak honestly in a group. In many social settings, this is rare because so many social barriers need to be crossed before people can reach each other beyond their masks. I was curious to hear what participants need to feel safe enough to speak openly. In theatre improvisation, it is often the most uncensored and immediate thoughts or words that suddenly emerge, things that can even surprise the person speaking! In that sense, this last question was about examining the group dynamics: what makes honesty possible, and what allows someone to speak without fear of judgment or misunderstanding?

Performance session 

What do I call performance sessions? It is an experimental format I have been working with for three years now, and it stands somewhere between a workshop, an art get-together, an informal dialogue, and a rehearsal for a performance that does not yet exist. Inspired by Augusto Boal’s legendary Theatre of the Oppressed, the idea is that participants create together, moving beyond the binaries of creator and spectator, since they are both performers and spectators of one another. This short-circuit of the performative situation can lead to the release of hidden energies, helping participants cross their own boundaries of performing in a semi-theatrical setting, with the hope that a similar transformation may also occur in real life. 

Each session adapts to the participants and to the context it is being played out. They are based on movement, presence, and collective creation. These are highly interactive moments, sometimes intense, where co-creation and improvisation are the focus. The challenge of this Dialogue Night was time. We had only three hours, from 19:00 to 22:00. In that short span, I had to compress what would normally take four days of workshops.

The idea for this particular session was to deconstruct dialogue and see what happens beyond casual exchange. With the help of Brazilian writer Paulo Freire, dialogue can be understood as an essential tool for liberation, as we read in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire, in his revolutionary ways of thinking about education, makes clear that any encounter with friends, family, or strangers can become an educative moment, because knowledge always travels from one place to another. What matters is our awareness of this process. In this sense, dialogue is not mere speech, not just conversation, but, as Freire describes, an ethical exchange grounded in humility, love, and trust, in how we exist with one another. For Freire, liberating education is always dialogical: it requires collective reflection and action (praxis) while resisting cultural invasion, manipulation, and control.

We began with each participant writing their answers to the initial three questions upon arrival on some small cards. These materials served as seeds for later group work and improvised performances, ensuring that everyone’s reflections shaped their collective group work and processes. After a short introduction outside the building, we faced our first challenge: one participant did not speak English well. Rather than excluding him, others stepped in to translate, and with mutual care, which was central to the session’s spirit, he later joined a Dutch-speaking group.

Inside, I guided the group through some basic bodily and voice warm-up exercises. These were not only energizing but also a way for me to sense the participants’ levels of comfort, energy, and openness. This helped me shape the groups: mixing high and low energy, comfort and discomfort, and ensuring that almost all participants worked with people they had never met before. 

The four groups were then invited to explore the building and find a space that resonated with them. They settled in different places, such as the kitchen, the office, the adjacent hallway on the third floor, and the steep amphitheatre across the second and third floors. From there, each group began its own journey of exploring dialogue through dialogue itself. Their only initial task was to use the written answers to the three questions as conversation starters.

This stage lasted around half an hour, but what I noticed was that many remained seated, and no performative work could have emerged if this were going on. I tried to encourage each group to stand more actively, to move, to experiment, to embody any themes, words, or images they found important from their discussions. This shift was crucial in my opinion because it pushed the dialogue beyond language and more into performative gestures, however raw and fastly made they looked. I reminded them that this was only the beginning and that it was better to try anything than to overthink, since we had limited time to create some form of presentation or stageable acts in that sense.

While the group in the office continued to struggle by choosing to keep talking rather than moving into performance, the rest began experimenting. I managed to pay a visit to each group for one rehearsal round, where each group presented their early sketches, followed by quick feedback. Already running late, the groups then had around twenty more minutes to refine and prepare their final works. I also pushed them to consider their spaces carefully: light, set-up, and how they wanted the audience to enter and encounter the work. In effect, we were making short performance pieces in less than 80 minutes, which is a unique and intuitive way of working where decisions had to be made quickly, leaving room for subconscious thinking and collective creation to surface. 

Group works

Though time was short, almost all participants managed to move beyond politeness and lean into risk-taking, vulnerability, and even moments of group friction. There were also two significant incidents: one participant left during group work, as the workshop felt too demanding in a moment of personal difficulty; another chose not to participate in the final presentation, feeling disconnected from the theme their group had chosen. Both moments were valuable because they revealed flexibility and respect for personal conditions, and that is something that stands in sharp contrast to classical theatre or film sets, where performers rarely have the agency to withdraw without being labeled “unprofessional.” In our session, we tried to accommodate different needs, even if that meant non-participation. The simple act of saying “no” in such a context can itself be liberating, making it, hopefully, easier to exercise that right in life beyond the workshop.

Before moving into the performances, I want to share the answers of participants to three guiding questions. One thing I need to mention is that the answers that were similar or pointed out the same concern were merged into one answer. 

1) What is your biggest fear in talking to someone you don’t know?

• Not liking the person’s energy or opinions.
• Being misunderstood or having my words delivered wrongly.
• Getting stuck in small talk or running out of things to say.
• The other person does not want to talk.
• Feeling responsible for keeping the conversation going.
• Not being fully present.
• Feeling unaccepted. 

Most of these fears circle around rejection, misinterpretation, or the pressure of performance in conversation. Participants expressed how vulnerable they feel to risk exposure to misunderstanding or indifference. These responses echo Freire’s insistence that dialogue requires humility and trust, without which we will retreat into self-protection.

2) When do you feel most alienated in a conversation?

• When there is nothing in common, or the gap feels unbridgeable.
• When I cannot express myself and have to block myself.
• When I feel unsafe and shut down.
• When people gossip, or are on drugs, or talk about trivial topics like reality TV!
• When everyone knows each other, and I am the outsider.
• When I’m tired, burned out, or my mood doesn’t match the room.
• In an unwelcome atmosphere or when others are indifferent to my presence. 

Here, alienation was linked strongly to power imbalance, exclusion, and atmosphere. Both environmental and emotional factors, such as social familiarity, safety, and mood, shaped participants’ sense of belonging. These examples show how easily a conversation can become anti-dialogical when no space is consciously made for all voices present.

3) When do you feel there is enough space to speak honestly in a group?

• When there are like-minded people.
• When there is a facilitator who ensures equal participation.
• When participants can postpone judgment.
• When others genuinely try to understand.
• When I feel compassionately listened to.
• When I feel responsible for voicing what is not being said.
• When trust and respect are present. 

What repeats here is safety, trust, respect, and suspended judgment, which are the conditions most needed for honest speech. It was especially striking that many participants emphasized facilitation as key to leveling power and ensuring equal chances to speak. Dialogue was not framed as a solo act, but as a shared responsibility, resonating deeply with Freire’s ideas of dialogical praxis.

Descriptions of Group Performances

The Kitchen
A woman and two men gather around a restaurant cart stacked with empty glasses. The men play as if their glasses are football players, moving them irregularly across the cart’s surface. They start by stacking some glasses on top of each other. The woman, who could also be seen as a referee or the ruler, intervenes: “First, you need to create your goal.” One player makes a completely closed goal, and the other reacts by removing glasses and placing them on another shelf, disrupting the game. Suspicion remains for us, can they really play? Eventually, one makes the goal completely open. They shake hands, ready to begin: 3, 2, 1. But the game keeps on being interrupted, as the rules are misunderstood. It’s the referee’s turn to make a mistake, the ball gets stuck in a glass, and suddenly the players begin playing seriously, though without the ball. Only later does the ball return, and their moves resemble chess rather than football. The piece unfolded as a funny and strange game yet layered with metaphors for rules, miscommunication, and the fragile negotiation of play. Here, the struggle over rules and goals felt like a metaphor for dialogue itself: can we play if we don’t agree on what the game is?

The Office
An office table is in the middle of the scene/room, and the lights are off. The only source of light is the slight blue rays of the setting sun that poetically light up the space. One character is lying motionless on top of the desk as we enter, while one reclines on a chair with a head down on the desk, and the other is under the desk on the floor. At first, there is silence, and an invitation to listen. Gradually, their voices emerge, building into a soothing, responsive choir. The group transforms the sterile office space into a resonant, comforting space of sound. No words are spoken; instead, bodies, voices, and space itself take charge of transformation. By doing less, they achieved more and could draw the audience into attentive listening. Their murmurs, hums, and tones felt like a conversation in sound, one that the audience could easily enter. This work revealed how dialogue does not always need words and listening itself became the shared speech.

The Amphitheatre
The performers begin by arguing about their performance and whether they are even performing at all.

• I don’t know what I need to know right now!
• Sometimes you just need to not know! Why should I need to know? There’s nothing to know.

Confusion becomes the performance itself. They discuss their process, treat the amphitheatre as a chapel, and invite the audience into “the chapel of awkwardness.” They ask, “Are you awkward now?” and encourage the audience to pray to “the gods of awkwardness.” Gestures, duos, and long moments of yelling are all stitched together into “a play that doesn’t exist.” Parodical as it seems, the awkwardness is their absurd pursuit, which, like “Waiting for Godot”, is never due to arrive. What did this say about dialogue? Or about alienation?

The narrow hallway on the third floor
Under a ceiling lamp at the start of a narrow corridor, one character sits in a chair while three others hover around him. An awkward, unresolved tension defines the piece. The game begins with not understanding the seated character’s name.

• Martin? 
• What’s your name? 
• Mate.
• Martin, right? 
• No, like the drink, Club Mate! 
• Ah, really? 
• Why didn’t you say so? 
• Do you know her? 
• Do you think you know each other? 
• Do you know him? 
• Where are you from?
• Are you good? 
• I am from Hungary. 
• I don’t like Hungary. 
• Why? Something happened to you there? 
• I am hungry, actually. 
• There’s something on your teeth. 
• She said she’s hungry. 
• Is there something to eat? 
• Do you feel uncomfortable if I put my feet here? 
• Is that comfortable for you? 
• Maybe.
• I am not sure if that’s necessary.
• What do you mean?
• Martin? 
• No, his name is Mate. 
• Are you hungry? 

(on the phone) 

• I met someone called Martin. Where is he from? I don’t know. Where are you from? 
• I am from Hungary. 
• He is from Portugal. 

The confusion continues: Are you from Hungary or just hungry? Are you Martin or Mate? Do you know each other? A phone call extends the awkwardness further. The shoes of one character are placed provocatively on the chair. All exchanges are funny, absurd, slightly biting, and create an atmosphere of playful estrangement.

This work reached a high level of improvisation, leaning into the embodied awkwardness that is intrinsic to most first encounters. It offered a vivid, entertaining answer to the workshop’s guiding questions. After seeing this work, we could have a clue about embodying alienation, honesty, and discomfort, and the fact that the group invited the audience to reimagine what connection might feel like when masks fall away. By stretching awkwardness to absurdity, the group made us feel how fragile and funny first encounters can be, and how quickly language collapses when trust is not yet there.

Conclusion

What stayed with me after this evening was the honesty of these performative situations. Even in their rawness, or maybe especially because of it, the performances gave us a glimpse into how fragile dialogue can be, and how much work it takes to hold space for it. People came in as strangers, with their own fears and hesitations, and still managed to create something together that was not only a sketch of performance, but also a sketch of encounter itself. This shows me again that performance, when treated not as spectacle but as a shared process, can transform not only the way we look at each other, but also the way we allow ourselves to be looked at.

And maybe this is also where the element of healing enters, without needing to name it too loudly. To improvise, to say yes or no, to be heard or to step away, to risk being awkward and still be accepted in the logic of an improvised act is liberating in itself. Freire reminds us that dialogue is both an act of love and of courage, and in this short session, I could see traces of both. What we created together was unfinished, fragile, sometimes absurd, but it was also deeply human. And if this can happen in three or four hours, maybe it is enough to believe that dialogue, in all its forms, can continue outside the walls of Dokhuis too.