About us

Who we are

Same Worldwide is the work of Samuel van Keeken and Merette van Hijfte, two artists building a body of work around existential courage: the capacity to face yourself, your finiteness, and your freedom, and still choose to live fully. Through film, the Same Method, written work, and retreats in Panama, we make tools for people who want to be fully alive.

Founders

Samuel van Keeken

Co-founder

Dutch filmmaker, writer, and actor trained at the Dutch Mime School. His work lives at the intersection of film, movement, and contemplative practice, revolving around the courage to face yourself and the world.

Merette van Hijfte

Co-founder

Dutch performance artist, actor and filmmaker trained at the Dutch Mime School. She has performed works by Marina Abramović at the Stedelijk Museum and explores physical extremes as a way to strip everything back to what’s real.

How this started

Our story

We met each other during an audition in which we repeatedly had to run into a wall for 30 minutes. From there, we became study mates, gym buddies, acrobatic partners, colleagues and founders of Same Worldwide. We’ve always been fascinated by the absurdity of being alive, fostering a love for truthful experiences, physical extremes, and slow questions that demand life to be investigated and experienced.

Even though we’re not mental health experts, we have always believed that the courage to exist as fully and as genuinely as possible is the bedrock of a well-lived life. Ultimately, this is what we have dedicated our lives to. Hence, we studied to become actors and performance artists, training presence, liveliness, and inner drive. At some point we realised that our trainings shouldn’t only be for actors-in-the-making. They can be for anyone looking to deepen their experience of Being itself, becoming present, or re-discovering what makes them tick.

So, in 2024, we started developing practices that help people build self-clarity, authenticity, and meaningful direction while resisting modernity’s pull into continuous distraction, embitterment, or a loss of autonomy. That work eventually became the Same Method: a practice in existential courage, and truth – confronting, perhaps painful, but ultimately a liberating truth – while staying present, light, free from victimhood and grounded on planet Earth.

Our work

What we make

The Same Method

Four practices for building existential courage from the ground up.

Retreats

Workshops and retreats in Panama. Train the method in person.

Works

Films and performances, one project a year.