# What Is AGT? Reading P4 Through Actor-Generated Topology Without Labelling People
Beginning with the 2025 essay *The Grammar of Events*, this introduction explains AGT's action tendencies and four process dimensions, while distinguishing research vocabulary, analysis of works and theoretical claims that require verification.
P4 Theater website essay · 2026-09-07
## A vocabulary that returns from practice to questions
AGT abbreviates the name Actor-Generated Topology, as used on the main website. In 2025, *The Grammar of Events* attempted to discuss how action emerges through P4's practice: how someone enters a situation, how rules and space affect action, and how others receive that action.[1](#agttext)[2](#agtpage)
Before using this vocabulary, it is necessary to locate it in time. It is a methodological formulation developed later, and should not be projected backwards as a language already shared by everyone who helped build the theatre in 2015. A theory can reinterpret the past, but reinterpretation is not the same as the reasons people had for acting at the time.
## Four tendencies describe actions first
Part One of *The Grammar of Events* uses A, N, P and V to describe four action tendencies: constructing order, following norms, testing or breaking rules, and maintaining distance to observe. The source names these tendencies Architect, Discipline/NPC, Player and Stalker, respectively.[1](#agttext)
A more useful approach is to begin by asking what happens at a particular moment. Someone proposes rules, someone follows them, someone tests their limits, and someone observes for the time being. The same person may act differently at different stages. Calling someone permanently a player or a spectator turns a vocabulary intended to discuss change into a fixed personality label.
## Four process dimensions connect the material
The same essay discusses four dimensions: conception, form, execution and reception. These can become four reading questions: why was the project initiated, what rules were arranged, what did participants actually do, and how did others respond? These questions can connect different kinds of archival material rather than merely explain an abstract diagram.[1](#agttext)
For example, in reading *Duel Club*, the six players and voting rules specified in the recruitment announcement provide explicit material about form. The course of the voting requires records of the event; how audiences understood the result requires material about reception. A recruitment notice alone cannot fill all four dimensions. The framework helps by exposing what kind of material is still missing, rather than inventing answers to stand in for it.[3](#duel)
## Actual people exceed the model
In Li Chen's training account, an observer steps onto the stage, walks with eyes closed and writes about the experience again after acting. AGT may help us notice this shift of position, but one letter cannot explain everything she felt during the exercise. Bodies, language, situations and the author's own account are richer than the result of a classification.[4](#howler)
The audience criticism of *Iceberg* offers another test. If theory explains every dissatisfaction as part of emergence, criticism loses its capacity to change a judgment. A useful method should allow us to identify aspects of a work that do not hold together, rather than make every failure automatically evidence that the theory is right.[5](#icecrit)
## Keeping theoretical claims open to discussion
*The Grammar of Events* makes many broadly applicable formulations and proposes classificatory and structural models. A public article establishes that this research language has been proposed. By itself, it cannot establish independently verified predictive power. AGT is introduced here as an interpretive framework within artistic practice, not as an established scientific law or an academic consensus.[1](#agttext)
To begin using it, select a small passage supported by material: list the rules in effect, the observable actions and subsequent responses, then ask whether the four tendencies or four dimensions make the differences clearer. If the framework obscures what participants say, return to the source and revise the interpretation. In this way, AGT can help readers formulate more precise questions without first turning complex people into fixed theoretical roles.
## Sources and original texts
1. [The Grammar of Events: Actor-Generated Topology (AGT) and the Birth of the Postmodern Subject, Part One](https://p4theater.cn/articles/2025/2025-08-19-事件的语法-行动者生成拓扑学-AGT-与后现代主体的诞生-上-26b7b320cd/) — He Fa, 2025-08-19
2. [AGT: Actor-Generated Topology](https://p4theater.cn/agt/) — P4 Theater, project page
3. [Call for Performers/Players | Duel Club: A Real-Life Battle Royale!](https://p4theater.cn/articles/2021/2021-09-25-演员-玩家招募-决斗俱乐部-现实版的-大逃杀-游戏-84227be0e4/) — Purple Action, 2021-09-25
4. [Am I a Journalist? (3) | Performer Training Record for Howlers on the Rooftop](https://p4theater.cn/articles/2021/2021-01-05-我是不是一个记者-3-天台上的嚎叫者-演员训练记录-a777d179d6/) — Li Chen, 2021-01-05
5. [Audience Criticism | Spectator No. 15 on Iceberg](https://p4theater.cn/articles/2022/2022-01-06-观众批评-15号观众对-冰山-的批评-04f9b15338/) — P4 Theater and You, 2022-01-06
An essay for the P4 Theater website, based on public archives. Its analysis is not presented as the direct speech of He Fa or other participants; historical source texts retain their own credits and dates.
Chinese webpage: https://p4theater.cn/knowledge/agt-reading-method/