Working Method is a workshop and a performance all in one. Theatre maker and performer Enkidu Khaled’s performance is a unique form of creative audience interaction. He combines participatory actions with his own history, emphasizing the power of imagination.

During the performance, he analyses and simplifies the complex process of making theatre. Together with the audience he shows how adults as well as children can use his method to translate their own ideas into a scene. By using a four-step plan he guides us from our first associations to a performance.  The method can also be applied for other art forms or even professionals working in another branch, such as therapists, teachers…

Alternately referring to his own war traumas and the desire to make meaningful theater, he makes the audience complicit in musing about the importance of artistic expression and reflection. He gives various examples (both live and video) to illustrate the possibilities of creating by using the method.

However, when we are about to fully go along with the proposed working method, Enkidu Khaled strikes the ground from under our feet: do we really think that art can save the world?

The work takes place in a room (not per se theater). Drawings on paper are hanging against the wall. Enkidu will alternatively talk referring to the papers on the wall, draw on papers on the ground, together with or by the audience; he shows examples on video, with a beamer projecting its images on the papers at the wall, and some scenes by using some attributes (see budget).

The method contains 4 phases, which Enkidu teaches both theoretically & by showing examples (video, live, drawings). The 1st is also exercised by the audience. Enkidu shows an example & invites members of the audience to draw their own. Candidates do this individually, the others collectively, guided by Enkidu (and possibly a translator).. Starting from own memories they follow a process of drawings and associations to make more layered images. Everyone explains the different steps taken.

Enkidu teaches the other phases, and inspires the audience by showing different examples, live or per video, of scenes which resulted from the method. These examples refer to his own history of living in a war-torn Baghdad, personal stories which he also shares with the audience and which are illustrative of the many issues we face in today’s society.

concept Enkidu Khaled production Platform 0090 coproduction StormOpKomst, de Brakke Gond, C-TAKT, Big in Belgium, Richard Jordan Productions, Theatre Royal Plymouth in association with RBC/Upper Church