2023↗
Personal Chronicle / PHA
Begin with a personal account, propose a project publicly, and continue the archive through action.
Collaborative practice2023 / Collective puppet-making, role play and an evolving theatrical environment
Happiness Kingdom
Citizens emerge from discarded materials, and the characters made by participants continue to act and live.
- He Fa’s role
- Co-design of formats, rules and models, and organisation through P4
- Credits in the collaborative archive
- Happiness Kingdom, Shi Jiating, Tian Xinyi, Bangbang and participants
- Documented strands
- Dream Factory; Seven Princes and the Strawberry Princess; image-making activities
- He Fa’s account
- His signed May 2024 text lists it among formats he designed or helped design
Complete chapter contents
Entering a role through making
Happiness Kingdom first invited participants to make puppets together from discarded objects, paper and lightweight clay. Makers gave each character colours, a personality, allergens and skills, establishing its identity as a citizen of the fictional world. Images published in late April 2023 already show colourful figures, handmade settings and installations. The Dream Factory call for 1–7 May invited further participants to make props for subsequent theatrical activity.
The May call for Seven Princes and the Strawberry Princess turned audience members into visiting characters. They were asked to bring a small handmade gift and enter through conversation, talents and improvised games. Public texts by Shi Jiating, Tian Xinyi, Bangbang and others extended the world from different roles. June’s face-painting and July’s Trial of Shijiating expanded character-making through bodies, colour and collective construction.
The scope of co-design
In his signed 2024 retrospective, He Fa includes Happiness Kingdom among the rule-based formats he “designed or helped design.” This supports a co-design credit while characters and texts retain their respective authors. The archive presents the realised puppets and settings alongside the announced event structures. A proposal to film and edit an event remains a proposal, rather than a completed film credit.
Works & details
Moving image & related documents
Archive note
Compiled from contemporary public calls, project descriptions and later records. Retrospective accounts and announcements retain their distinct dates; English translations were prepared for this archive.
Continue exploring
CLOSE READING / 2026 CURATORIAL INTERPRETATION
Happiness Kingdom
Does making a character change how one can enter a story?
A world begins with a small object made by hand. A figure’s personality is not prewritten in a hidden database; paper and clay can change the character its maker imagines. Gifts, conversation and games then carry those identities into exchanges among people. Making objects and making theatre are not separate categories here. A thing is made, acquires a name and relations, and becomes something another person can answer when entering the story.
There is an echo, with differences, of Gewu’s lamps. The lamps fix generative rules into an object; Happiness Kingdom lets objects receive further names and uses from other people. Yet the fictional world still has invitations, points of entry and dates. Openness does not mean an absence of structure. The portfolio should give each maker and initiator a clear position, allowing visitors to enter through He Fa’s work and continue toward others’ works rather than absorbing every contribution into a collective label.
The limits of this reading
Plans to make a film are not counted as a completed film. Other people’s characters and texts do not become He Fa’s individual works.
Sources for this reading
Based on the 2023 figure-making and activity texts. He Fa’s signed 2024 recollection supports his co-design role.
Work record
Happiness Kingdom, 2023. Collective puppet-making, role play and an evolving theatrical environment. He Fa’s role: Co-design of formats, rules and models, and organisation through P4.
- Work / series
- Happiness Kingdom
- Date
- 2023
- Medium
- Collective puppet-making, role play and an evolving theatrical environment
- He Fa’s role
- Co-design of formats, rules and models, and organisation through P4
- Catalogue section
- Collaborative practice
Cite this record: Happiness Kingdom · 2023 · Co-design of formats, rules and models, and organisation through P4 · https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/happiness-kingdom
TAKE A PATH ACROSS
Other paths from this work.
Working together
How tabletop things compose a world
Gathering assembles tables, people and rooms into surrounding images; Happiness Kingdom develops character relations from handmade figures. Both organize worlds through concrete things, while montage and shared object-making retain different authors.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Work imageImages and presentation ↗
In the first image, table, food, people and room fragments form an encircling composition, with directions changed by the collage.
- Period documentEntering a role through making ↗
Public materials from April–May 2023 describe collective puppet making, assigned personalities and role recruitment; individual roles and texts retain their own authors.
- Work imageImages and presentation ↗
Language in transit
What identity does a name give an object
Happiness KingdomGewu Studio / Products and Spatial Experiments
Tantan’s naming text connects ten homophones to temperaments and flowers; Happiness Kingdom lets makers give figures personalities. Names extend objects’ meanings in both, while a series-naming proposal differs from an ongoing shared world.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Period documentEntering a role through making ↗
Public materials from April–May 2023 describe collective puppet making, assigned personalities and role recruitment; individual roles and texts retain their own authors.
- Period documentTen names for Tantan ↗
The Gewu Tantan text connects ten homophonic names with temperaments and floral images; it is a naming proposal.
- Period documentEntering a role through making ↗
2026-10-04 / ARCHIVAL ADDITION
Source materials, process and versions
The Happiness Kingdom Is Family directory is connected to the existing work. Camera numbering identifies sources without assigning unverified names, relationships or events.
FROM HERE, ELSEWHERE
Passages between works
- When another person enters
Participants make figures, bring gifts and enter roles; different authors keep adding to the world.
Related records in the archive
- Personal Chronicle / PHA ↗2023
- Romance Theatre ↗2022
- P4 Theater ↗2015–present