2020–2021 / Theatre, rehearsal and documentation
The Rooftop Howler
From recruitment and rehearsal to performance: tracing how shared work takes form.
HE FA’S ROLE
P4 organizing and 3P documentation
Complete chapter contents
- Year
- 2020–2021
- Medium
- Live theatre, rehearsal and moving-image record
- Role
- P4 organisation / 3P live documentation
Further reading
Howlers on the Rooftop performance detailsThe project moved through casting and rehearsal in 2020 and was performed at P4 at 19:30 on 2 January 2021.
Project statement
Howlers on the Rooftop was developed through P4U, leaving open calls, rehearsal materials, participant texts, a public performance and later conversations. The performance took place at P4 at 19:30 on 2 January 2021.
Alongside his organisational work through P4, He Fa joined Zhang Shaohua and Huang Lucang in the 3P group’s live documentation.
A line through the work
When personal experience is rehearsed and heard by others, how does it become a public situation?
The theatre manager within the script
Page 9 of the retained Rooftop Howler script PDF names “He Fa” among the characters in Act Four, with that character responding to an interruption as the theatre manager. This is a role within the script: the document alone does not establish that He Fa performed in a particular show or wrote the script, and its fictional events should not be treated as real incidents. The filename’s designation “final playwright’s version” is a version label and does not establish that this text was used in a public performance.
Archival document supplement. Source: the retained PDF titled The Rooftop Howler (final playwright’s version), p. 9; title translated. The date of completion and playwright credit have not been verified. English is an editorial translation.
CLOSE READING / 2026 CURATORIAL INTERPRETATION
The Rooftop Howler
Does participating in a work mean agreeing with it?
A character who keeps howling makes the fictional city ask what his voice means. Discussion around the production returns that question to its making: who can speak, whose views alter the structure, and who stays chiefly to complete the performance? The published interviews are valuable because they do not polish every experience into the same story of growth. Some value the company more than the script; others leave more certain that they want a different kind of theatre.
These disagreements are not decorative signs of authenticity. They test what openness actually enabled. Giving them a central place allows source material to resist the portfolio’s positive account. Yet one participant’s allegation about another person should not become an adjudicated fact. The accurate form retains who said what, when, and leaves room for further responses. Documentation gains value here by letting a work remain open to judgment after its performance ends.
The limits of this reading
Criticism in the interview is an attributed account, not a factual ruling by this site. Characters are not equated with their performers.
Sources for this reading
Based on performance records and the first Howler backstage interview, published 28 March 2021. Interviewees’ views retain their attribution.
Work record
The Rooftop Howler, 2020–2021. Theatre, rehearsal and documentation. He Fa’s role: P4 organizing and 3P documentation.
- Work / series
- The Rooftop Howler
- Date
- 2020–2021
- Medium
- Theatre, rehearsal and documentation
- He Fa’s role
- P4 organizing and 3P documentation
- Catalogue section
- Collaborative practice
Cite this record: The Rooftop Howler · 2020–2021 · P4 organizing and 3P documentation · https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/rooftop-howler
TAKE A PATH ACROSS
Other paths from this work.
Working together
Where disagreement can appear
The Rooftop HowlerFinal Solution
Rooftop Howler preserves recruitment, rehearsals, performance and later conversations; Final Solution preserves questioning, voting and reflection. Both leave an event available for return viewing, while collective rehearsal and decisions about character removal use different forms of organization.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Event recordProject statement ↗
The project account records recruitment, rehearsals, performance and later conversations, together with on-site 3P documentation by He Fa, Zhang Shaohua and Huang Lucang.
- Period documentGiving the assembly the decision ↗
The May 2021 call and He Fa’s July account document questioning, voting, character departure and transcription with reflection; version differences remain explicit.
- Event recordProject statement ↗
2026-10-04 / ARCHIVAL ADDITION
Source materials, process and versions
Recruitment graphics name 2 January 2021 as a planned date. They remain separate from the first-rehearsal recordings and do not establish that the advertised event occurred as planned.
FROM HERE, ELSEWHERE
Passages between works
- When can it end
After a single public performance, differing participant accounts continue to reshape its history.
Related records in the archive
- P4 Theater ↗2015–present
- Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You ↗2023–2024