# Who Tells P4's Story After a Performance? Why a Public Archive Needs Different Voices
A comparison of P4's recruitment notices, training records, audience responses and ten-year retrospective: what each kind of material can answer, and why an archive of collective creation should not be rewritten as one author's success story.
P4 Theater website essay · 2026-09-07
## One project leaves more than one kind of article
In P4's public articles, a work often leaves more than an introduction. There are also recruitment notices, rehearsal observations, participants' statements, responses after performances and retrospectives written years later. These texts belong to different times and are written by people occupying different positions. He Fa's 2025 ten-year retrospective brings many such articles back into connection.[1](#ten)
Faced with abundant material, a reader may find it easiest to combine everything into one smooth history. Yet that smoothness can conceal significant differences: what people expected at the time is not the same as what they subsequently experienced, and an organiser's retrospective cannot replace another participant's response. An archive's value lies in keeping those differences available to be seen again.
## An announcement records a commitment; an account records a position
The announcement for *Last Rehearsal* specifies the time, venue, roles and filming arrangements. It helps establish how the event was organised, but cannot establish how every audience member judged it. Li Chen's training record for *Howlers on the Rooftop* shows how an observer entered the exercises. It is highly specific, while remaining one person's viewpoint.[5](#last)[2](#howler)
Neither kind of material needs to replace the other. An announcement helps readers understand how an event invited people in; a personal account shows how someone acted and made sense of what happened within it. Placing the two alongside each other gives a project a recognisable structure while retaining the hesitations and departures within actual experience.
## A review should not be reduced to a line of praise
The fifteenth spectator at *Iceberg* offered sharp criticism of its structure and presentation. In a response to *Last Rehearsal*, Wang Yanan described being moved by sound and fragmented expression. These texts concern different performances and cannot simply cancel one another out. Each matters because it offers a specific, situated experience of reception.[3](#icecrit)[4](#lastreview)
If reviews are mined only for enthusiastic adjectives, both criticism and feeling become publicity material. Keeping the full text accessible, with its author and date, allows readers to encounter its context. It also allows a response to resist being wholly absorbed into the website's later interpretation. An archive maintained by an institution can still give the people it records voices distinct from the institution's own.
## Years, credits and versions of works are part of the content
An article's publication date is not necessarily the date of the events it describes. A training record may appear after a public performance; records made over particular hours may be organised and published online years later. When performance material enters a film, there are also different versions and objects to distinguish. If dates and versions are ignored, an abundance of material can make the history more confusing for later readers.
Credits are likewise more than a line at the foot of a page. Who wrote a response, played an instrument, made a record or organised an event determines the position from which a text arises. The *Last Rehearsal* announcement preserves these different responsibilities. Expanding knowledge of P4 and He Fa should clarify such relationships, rather than gather everyone's labour under whichever name is easiest to find in a search.[5](#last)
## How new essays can coexist with an older archive
An essay written today can propose new comparisons and connect previously scattered material. But a new interpretation should leave a route back to its sources: identify the article on which it relies, explain which aspect of its structure is being analysed and how, and state which questions still require moving-image evidence or other material.
P4's continuity as a public archive is reflected not only in a growing number of pages, but also in the ability of older material to test new judgments. Readers can agree with a new essay or follow its links back to criticism, announcements and accounts to develop their own understanding. Making that return possible is a condition for additional articles to accumulate into knowledge.
## Sources and original texts
1. [P4 Theater, Ten Years](https://p4theater.cn/articles/2025/2025-03-08-p4剧场-十年-7455016cd1/) — He Fa, 2025-03-08
2. [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
3. [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
4. [Last Rehearsal: A Response | Beginning to Speak — Wang Yanan](https://p4theater.cn/articles/2023/2023-08-30-最后的排练-评论-开始诉说-王亚南-662aaeeabb/) — Wang Yanan, 2023-08-30
5. [P4 Finale | Last Rehearsal: Public Performance | Love, Death, Shoot Self with You](https://p4theater.cn/articles/2023/2023-08-25-p4终章-最后的排练公演-爱-死亡-人类投降派-7fc3f2ef15/) — P4 Theater / He Fa, 2023-08-25
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/criticism-and-public-archive/