Almost everyone who comes to P4 Theater repeatedly asks, "Why do theatre, why do such a project, is it a public good? Even the first time we're here, they think we're liars.
The location of the theatre does not look like the urban or art areas in which the traditional theatres are located, the founders are not professional theatre practitioners, the theatre has no funding or other profitable projects, and the name p4U looks like PUA, with all the signs of suspicion, and I can't help but ask why we're doing such projects.
It will be recalled that, when the theatre was established in 2015, it was located in an open art laboratory, a creative base that could integrate different ideas on a continuous basis, called the theatre because of its inclusivity, freedom, presence and, of course, its long-standing photography practice, which is a performance. It was later integrated into psychology, which made it possible to create expression in theatre.
P4 Theater has been exploring ways to express himself more freely since its inception in 2015, from the first Real Image to the subsequent screenings, to the present p4U, one step at a time to clarify the nature of P4 Theater, an art laboratory that focuses on the integration of the three media, photography, theatre and psychology. The theatre was born out of our true quest to create an area of practice, language and action that allows everyone to see, play, film and express themselves freely.
01
Free expression.
We're always used to building a cage for ourselves to look in this seemingly safe cage. The outside world, when trying to touch its very existence, always returns to nothing. This cage has become more and more entrenched in daily life, with a clear vision of the social identity that we have been shaped. But all the cages will break. For "freedom" is too narrow and rigid.
All our perceptions, thoughts and wills are all that we have at any time, and reality has run over us, leaving a trail of things, and the repetition thus constitutes an important part of the cage. Our perception of ourselves and of reality is also in it, forming a circle of dark, increasingly blurred gases around the cage.
A sense of consciousness born capable of thinking and dreaming should not be closed down. Life itself is vast. All rational self-building is pale before it, and the comfort zone built for itself as it grows up is no longer real and becomes a symbolic image that needs to be rebuilt. We travel through the pretexts we seek for ourselves, and the absolute truth does not exist in the realm we control, and we need to come out and stand before the unknown. What exactly does "existence" mean?
We need to create a way for ourselves to connect to the outside world, not to repeat the traces of reality, but to respond to them. The expression is the unexpected Mars that shines on the path to freedom. The closed self does not become the light of light, and our own feelings are intrinsically deep, and the greater the uncertainty, the greater the freedom, the explosion, the new life, as soon as we enter the path of exploration, so that it becomes visible in language or action.
Push the door of the cage, embrace uncertainty, step into the unknown, feel for yourself, act for the expression of others. Will you see the complete picture of life when you remove the black fog? Even if it's instantaneous.
Our vulnerability is always fantasizing of an ideal society, where we talk about the expression of freedom, and where we reach out in the face of social and cultural changes, to reach out to achieve that true feeling, and to establish real connectivity with the earth. The p4U plan is to break this illusion, where everyone has the opportunity to express themselves, to create their own space, to intersect with the space of strangers in the theatre, to listen to cages colliding, to see the sparks of friction, to make dopamine feel real, to unmask the mask and to explore me, who is supposed to be free.
02
Practical language and action
Almost forced, we are involved in a constant construction of a consumption symbol for our subjects. Capital control, media projection, social discipline, we are becoming the subjects of desire machines, and images, landscapes, technologies are full of sensory space. Voices, memories, perceptions, dreams, reflections, thinking are trapped, and we have been tamed into our own material and worn by the symbol of consumption. The real desire as life itself is hidden.
"If the events of the past are suppressed and unable to enter their memory, they return in the form of an expression of action; if the subject does not remember the events of the past, he is bound to repeat the past in the form of action".
We recall the importance of practice. More precisely, in terms of language and action, it returns to its conscious nature. Language and action create much of an individual's connection to the world, or the energy that life itself already has, "languages are made up of unconsciousness", "action is an expression of unconscious desire", the practice of words and actions, not of expression or re-emergence, of pursuing forms of innovation, not of fascinating and amplifying limited self-inflicted experiences, but of throwing itself out, offering itself to become "he", to make a positive change in life.
P4U plans to bring together, through recruitment, a group of strangers in the theatre, individuals with completely different life experiences, who have little chance of meeting outside the theatre. Pain, laughter, pain, emotion, compromise, insistence, anger, understanding are here to be released from nothing until the explosion disappears. The stage was born of darkness, "all great myths are dark", the charades of wine, rituals and mystical worship, and the theatre belonged to the night at the beginning of the theatre. On stage, as in the arms of the returning mother Gaia, into the dark mother of the dream, into an inclusive sphere of free expression, linking the physical presence of the shore and the unwitting desire for true self on the other side. The stage embraces all suppressed desires, it's a unconscious fermentation. In the dark, dark currents lurking beneath a solid cage surfaced.
The real performer is the actor. He is not doing a role. He is not simply repeating words and moves. He does not play any other person. He does not show off his body. He is cleaning up, freeing himself and practicing himself. It is the performance that is real, good, bad, and unpredictable, and the deep emotions that are raging in the air, where he becomes a real human being. He's not supposed to be judged. He's outside all aesthetic types.
Drama is cruel, like society is cruel. The theatre is a self-conclusion break-up and, in the face of strangers, makes everyone a warrior, with his own energy field, a reflection of life in the air and a desire to connect. Where will the limits of freedom extend to the journey of heroes, where life once again falls outside the curtain?
03
Make this field.
P4 Theater has been working on this practice to create such a real space, a simple, complex, ambivalent, subtle and direct complex. By combining photography, psychology and drama, we created the mechanism of watching-play-photography, unlike all the other traditional theatres, shaking between reality and fiction, but rather more direct, more violent collisions of self-life. The p4U plan is to organize this form of organization, where the sponsors come here with ideas, where we recruit teams and actors, each with a different background, each with a different purpose and aspirations, and where we try to create a safe area where each participant can explore their ideas and allow failure, where everyone is motivated and encouraged to discover their own creation. This is a highly organized response to the centralization of directorship, the significance of the theatre, the search for a more inclusive and equitable way of creating, and the role no longer requires others to give meaning.
"Theater is intended to give life to what we suppress and better guide it..."
The nature of the performance is to be seen. Here, everyone is unique, and he has received attention and the opportunity to respond to the world. He sees his body with electricity, and sings his unblemished dignity. She's a living sculpture, a dance file. Entering their own personal myths, the stage became an exit from which the desire confined to real-life actors was released. The subject is structured by language and action. It is a belief to complete the sacrifice of the body on the stage and to sacrifice the disciplined self under the yoke that gives us the hope of freeing ourselves and rebirth. Practice is performance, in which we become ourselves.
P4 Theater's performance is open to everyone, private, and it's the real process that everyone touches. In the practice of words and actions, everyone is a mirror to each other, and past performances may not be effective here, but rather focus on life itself. "I love drama, but I'm not sure I'm fit to perform." We often get these messages. Come to a real p4U show, a P4 Theater, you'll get your answer. P4U is not doing a perfect theatre for acting and experience, but is more concerned with the growth of everyone here, widening the boundaries of life. In practice, a more self-friendly way out of the theatre is found.
The stage is where we deal with people and God, people and relationships between human beings and everything. P4 Theater is rooted in these values and ideals, and the possibilities that it contains will be infiltrated and demonstrated in these reflections. To try to rebuild a broader self, and in turn to truly sense the existence of others, to experience complete experience, to restore a relationship of trust between human beings, to explore the deep connection between ourselves and everything, and to understand the spiritual and moral essence of our experience. This is not so far away as it seems, but rather the possibility, in practice, for us to create this field, to bring life to ourselves, to connect individuals with society, to respect the differences between individuals and to involve individuals in their language and actions in the birth of a new world. The world no longer fills us with chaos, but with life.
P4 Theater is not a theatre, P4 Theater is a return, a revolution, a p4U plan is not a drama, a p4U plan is practice, growth, history.
I'd like to respond to one of the questions at the beginning of the article.
More about the P4 Theater and the p4 concepts, click on the link for information
p4U recruitment scheme
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P4 Theater
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The light revealed to the gods that if there is light, there is light.
Get on stage and be yourself. Be everyone.
Camera as Device takes dreams into reality.
We're both actors.
The same sense that brings you to the desired place.
# And the stifling of time guides us towards the future #
It's the nature of the phenomenon.
The truth of Muin's unsettling quest is clear.
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P4 Theater
P4 Theater was founded in 2005 by the artist Zhang Sauhua and He Fa.
The theatre is located 19.90 km north of the Beijing Central axis, the Tien An Gate.
It is a black box in the Beijing sculpture arts area, a fermentation that focuses on the integration of photography, theatre and psychology across the media. It currently has over 400 square metres of experimental theatres, art exhibitions, photo darkrooms, video screenings, educational lecture spaces and many art projects running throughout the year.
P4 Theater is a phantom time and space device, a mysterious place where memories travel, and a bright mirror that artists wear carefully. Every time you walk into the theater, you can see that you don't belong here.
Add p4 photons to make the dream come true.