P4 TheaterBegin by distinguishing three objects
Last Rehearsal was a public performance with a date and a venue. Filming at the event produced recorded material, while Shoot Self with You also has a later film edition. These objects are related, but they are not interchangeable. Distinguishing the three layers keeps a performance announcement from being treated as a film synopsis, and an arbitrary piece of live footage from being mistaken for the final edit. [1] [3]
The announcement published on 25 August 2023 scheduled the event for 19:30 the following day at Ciyu Bookstore’s Zhongjian Theatre branch (刺鱼书店·中间剧场店). It announced a combination of theatre performance, performance art, live sound and installation, with camera documentation to enter Shoot Self with You. This establishes a plan to bring filming into the live event; on its own, it cannot establish which shots were ultimately used. [1]
A final rehearsal opened to an audience
Rehearsal usually points towards a work that is not yet complete. This event instead took the final rehearsal as the name of a public occasion. Audiences were entering more than a preparatory stage confined backstage: the gathering had been announced and would be recorded. The relationship between rehearsal and public performance consequently becomes one of the work’s questions.
The announcement distinguishes performers, musicians and those making the record, and lists He Fa as the producer behind the event. Keeping these distinctions is necessary. He Fa’s initiation of the film does not make every sound, performance or act of recording his individual action. Understanding the collective occasion requires attention both to organisational work and to the specific contributions of the other participants. [1]
The camera faces a future audience
When a live event is organised with the prior knowledge that material will enter a film, present and future spectatorship already overlap. A spectator in the room can turn their head and choose where to direct attention. A film spectator enters the event mainly through the arrangement of images and sounds. They can pause or watch again, but cannot change where the camera stood at the time.
The move from a live event to an image does not transfer everything that happened in full. Framing leaves things offscreen; sound recording retains particular distances; editing determines how fragments sit beside one another. These are questions raised by the change of medium. No specific cut, close-up or timecode in the film is inferred here from the performance announcement. Analysing a particular shot still requires returning to a playable edition of the film and watching it passage by passage.
A post-performance response preserves another time
In Beginning to Speak, published on 30 August 2023, Wang Yanan describes the effects of lighting, fractured stories and vocal expression on their experience. This text has a different function from the announcement. The announcement organises an encounter yet to happen; the response records what one person writes after having been affected by it. [2]
The response helps us understand how one spectator received the performance. It does not establish that everyone shared the same experience, nor does it authorise an exhaustive account of the film’s meaning. Reading a moving-image work requires room for differences between participants in the event, spectators present in the room and later film audiences.
How to begin watching Shoot Self with You
The public project introduction connects recruitment, rehearsal, filming and performance in 2023 to a film edition of approximately 156 minutes that took shape in 2024. This timeline provides orientation before viewing. It indicates the practices from which the film emerged, without prescribing in advance what conclusions a viewer should reach. [4] [3]
One route begins with the Last Rehearsal announcement, to identify the live event’s roles and organisation. It continues through the film entry to a specific edition, then returns to post-performance writing to compare what each account emphasises or leaves aside. Notes should identify the edition and timecodes, and distinguish observed actions and heard speech from interpretation. Film and archive can then open onto each other without any single kind of material being made to prove an entire history beyond its reach.
Sources and original publications
- P4 Finale | Last Rehearsal, Public Performance | Love, Death, Shoot Self with You Original publication ↗p4剧场何发 · 2023-08-25 · Original public article
- Last Rehearsal: Beginning to Speak — Wang Yanan Original publication ↗Wang Yanan · 2023-08-30 · Original public article
- Shoot Self with You / 人类投降派P4 Theater · Project entry · Public project introduction
- He Fa: Creative Profile and CVP4 Theater · Project entry · Public project introduction
An essay from P4 Theater’s official website, based on public archives. The analysis is not presented as the direct speech of He Fa or other participants. The historical source texts retain their respective bylines and dates.