P4 Theater began in its founder's obsession with how to capture what is true. Theater became a container; photography became a method for inscribing real existence. From the early photographic practice of Real Image to the eventual filming of Human Surrender, P4 has repeatedly called that dense, irreducible, repressed Real onto the stage, then engraved its exposure record into digital negatives.
From the first construction of P4 Theater in 2015 to the move from Tiantongyuan to the Wanghualu office in 2021, P4 went through repeated rises and falls. Its concepts, consciousness, and attitudes kept adjusting and changing through practice.
Introductory articles on P4 Theater include the following; the underlined titles on the original page are clickable.
P4 Theater
What Is Real Image?
P4 Theater: Past, Present, Future, 510
P4 Chronicle | The Salon of the Unselected and the League of Losers
P4 Theater: A Generative University, a Winding Maze, a Hard Drive Engraved with Life
01
Over years of practice, P4 Theater has generated many theatrical forms, works, and creative methods. All of them came from recruitment opened to society. The accumulated experiments in recruitment systems are one reason P4 has maintained such force.
Texts on recruitment rules include the following; the underlined titles on the original page are clickable.
Come Plant Your Seed at P4 Theater | A Journey from Mystery to History
p4U Recruitment Plan
P4 Theater Real Image Recruitment Plan
p4X Challenge Recruitment
P4 Theater Real Image Recruitment Plan
p4X Challenge Recruitment
Theater and Fear | Personal Chronicle: Offering Up Our Future
To You, Me, Him, and Her, Who Spent Every Sunday Night at the Screenings
Recruitment | p4U Plan: Howler on the Roof
P4 Screening: The Crossing of Heart and Heart
Real Image: A Theater for Two, Only to See You Again
P4U Performance Audience Recruitment | Come Become the Torch That Lights a Firework of Accidental Sequences
Recruitment | p4U Plan: A Middle Position's Self-Rescue Guide after Accusing Love of Failure
Recruitment | p4U Plan: Kill That Rose
Recruitment | 3P Group Creators, as Witnesses and Recorders of the Eighth p4U Event, Kill That Rose
Refined in the Experimental Theater of The Final Solution: Using a False Death to Praise Life
Actor / Player Recruitment | Duel Club Recruitment Begins
Purple Action Recruitment | Come Join a Self-Generating Revolution
Draw Your Most Beautiful Line of Escape inside Battle Royale
Purple Action Player Recruitment | You Will Pass Away, I Will Pass Away, and We Will Live Forever
North Wind Theatre Club Recruitment | Me and the Literary Giant from the Theater Desert
Dialectical Theater Recruitment | Let Theater Become Alive Again, and Let It Be Born in Practice
Go to Hangzhou! To The World Question Center
Actor Recruitment | Gamble Once with Your Life: Ophelia in Progress
Actor Recruitment | Love Drama Corrects the Disorder of Love and Theater
Recruitment | In February, Riding the Wind Begins
Recruitment | Want to Leave Too Badly? Then Leave Everyday Life Together
Player Recruitment | Seven Princes and Strawberry Princess in the Kingdom of Happiness
This Is a Recruitment Text for Human Surrender
Connecting strangers quickly into a close community has always been P4's mission. Rather than calling it immersive theater or environmental theater, it is more accurate to say that the play begins the moment one steps into P4 Theater. Games and generation are at P4's core; the script is not necessarily the only thing. What P4 most cherishes and protects are the subtexts hidden deep inside each person.
02
P4 Theater has produced dozens of works, large and small, generated in many kinds of spaces. Especially after 2021, when various conditions prevented us from performing in the original large theater, we began moving through parks, boxing rings, offices, office buildings, dance studios, lawns, bookstores, abandoned ruins, and other places. These environments created more singular experiences and perceptions. We thank the people and partners who offered us their spaces.
The works that emerged include the following; the underlined titles on the original page are clickable.
P4 Theater | Shadow Counterpoint | GIF Edition
P4 Theater | Pixel Echo XIII
P4 Theater | Hamlet's Mirror | GIF Edition
Come to P4 Theater. Do not be afraid. Look into that dark abyssal mirror, and meet again the self you have never known.
October 31: P4 Theater's Cocoon House Public Performance
Dance Theater Cocoon House: When the Body Turns to Ashes, What Remains Is an Irreplaceable Soul
Sixteen Days and Nights of Waiting at P4 Theater: Cocoon House
Chiseling a Window out of the Void
Performing the Cocoon House inside Everyone: How Cocoon House Collides and Happens at P4 Theater
One-Minute Edit of the Dance Theater Cocoon House
Advertisement for Howler on the Roof: Dream Battle with the Retina
p4U Theater Work Howler on the Roof: Mystery Performance, New Year's Carnival, Performed Only Once
January 2: p4U Plan Howler on the Roof Public Performance
p4U Plan | A Play after Reflecting on Direct Action
Harm, Trust, Respect, Suicide: p4U and the 3P Group
P4 Theater | p4U Plan
Who's the middle? - Interactive interactive immersion drama: "Guide of the Mid-Rescue after Complaining the Failure of Love".
[P4U] The immersion drama, "Guide for the rescue of the middle after complaining about the failure of love."
It's not the future.
[p4U] Completing a self-reform in the Master's Slavery, a little excitement and sadness in a middle-class confession - mixed with delicate rogues and naive compromises, after mixed expectations and uneases
Full vote! Wild interactive music, "Kill the roses"!
It's too boring to be entertained.
I'll always remember you! See you at the ring!
Tomorrow, let your favorite live.
The first hour of October 23rd.
The 2nd hour, October 23rd.
3rd hour.
Four hours.
The cruel theater, the first declaration, Alto.
The North Wind is disgusting! Will you come on the first day of New Year?
The North Wind Theatre's "Ice Mountain."
The North Windshows, |, the rat catcher
Can the Northern Windshows roll their wings again?
Players recruit fools! Can you still play a deadly joke? On April 1st, the final puzzle will be discovered!
The North Wind Theatre in Hangzhou never gives up the power to re-see in the landscape.
On May 4th, the Hangzhou public performance, let us fall together in heaven. Lake
Century response, Zhang, Wang Zhang, come!
You're not going to brush a copy of your life change?
Pofilia's monologue came, she came, she was my moon. I thought I'd run out, but no, I fell in love with her and made me her yellow hair.
Kiss You, Kill Me, kiss you and kill me -- Kang and his unicorn. Play
The world's private scenes, the max, the peepers and the documentaries -- the sword and the Re-Seek compass.
"Reconstructing the implementation of the Council"
The Last Rehearsal, the The Last Rehearsal of Human Surrender
The Last Rehearsal of Love, Death, Human Surrender
The cosmonauts will be you and me in a second.
Scartin's show of "Landbreeding" - the abandoned Tangshan boy.
P4 Theater's viewers are the most moving, and they can see the difference in the drama generated in p4. Compared to the theatres performed in the national theatres - the finely organized and luxurious formations - they see that those who are not professional actors are in the state of life behind them, but the courage to exist as human beings. Many viewers are also becoming participants, beginning to play a more important role in the next play.
03
P4 has been summing up its own methodological theory, drawing up more possibilities in practice over and over again. Methodological theory is the cornerstone of all action, integrating the theory of psychoanalysis into our dramatic practice and generating stronger power.
The methodology summarized below (all underlined articles can be clicked)
P4 Theater, inspired.
Love and play.
How do you know what you look like?
Recruitment, drama is the best and the only way out for the productive.
The path to psychoanalytic practice has to be created by itself.
P4 Theater: a university created, a maze of mazes, a hard drive engraving life.
04
In the p4 process of practice and creativity, we have always been absolutely committed to co-creation, and each participant has come with his own story, words and deeds. P4 is a co-creational stage and a collective force that can freely launch, assemble, tell their stories and use various forms of workshops to communicate and increase the distance between them.
Some of the participants' articles (lined articles can be clicked)
Real Image, they say.
There's a bunch of Cinderella here.
To P4 Theater, the eternal, ubiquitous photons.
In the back of Cocoon House -- recording my existence with P4 Theater.
The second round of Cocoon House -- recording the existence of Me with P4 Theater
The third round of Cocoon House -- recording the existence of Me with P4 Theater.
In the back of Cocoon House -- recording my existence with P4 Theater.
Let yourself return to itself -- feel the nerve that connects you and me.
Let's dream together.
Why do I hate the "Howlers on the roof"?
I'm not a reporter.
I'm not a reporter.
The defense of suffering - Liu Dou in my heart
[P4 Theater] When Mary Shelley met the Howler on the roof
The red deer and her red rose.
They're talking about The Howlerer on the Top.
I have nothing to say about howlers.
I'm not a reporter or a reporter or a reporter.
P4U interview | This "Drama" is everybody's birth.
P4U interview |, "When you get the script, no one will think about it eventually."
P4U interview, "I'm just thinking, it's over. You know?"
♪ P4U interview ♪
P4U interview, "Unexpected by the audience, unexpected by the actor, unexpected by everyone."
P4U interview.
P4U interview, "If there's no record, it's really gone."
Donkey lips to horse mouths -- "The Howlers on the ceiling" is the main title.
My story is a diary and a nosebleed.
Three-person discussion on Milo Rau's "Restatement: homicide at the corner"
On the count of three days.
How was a play born?
Team 3P! Kill! Kill!
I'll meet you at Yellow Springs Road.
3P Team | on Professor C's projection and performance
210605 | farewell letter: my reflection in red light is good Look.
North Wind Theatre Club parking fee 30. Twenty bucks for the pass.
I can't believe there's a traffic jam on the north wind show.
The North Windshows, the hippies and the hippo.
The North Windshows has violated his dignity as a character.
The North Wind editorial rips my name off - nightmares are worse than dreams.
North Wind's editorial about the theater and the iceberg.
Audience criticizes the love of a specific person. The truth belongs to all mankind.
How can a wise man with a North Wind editorial figure out that the burning of a fool's bones...
The audience criticizes the 15th crowd for its criticism of the iceberg.
One late communication
All the frames of the North Wind Theatre have collapsed.
Dialogue 02, Fool's Day.
Watch the diaries.
An anonymous contribution, a hyena, a cheap struggle and a weak moan.
510 pens, twirl, just like your father!
Communicable script.
Communism scripts. Division
"The Virgins."
A communist script.
The communist script is a private diary.
I can't move, I can't see, I can't move.
"Increasing Forms of Anxiety in Neurosis and Psychosis."
"Look me in the eye, don't change direction" -- "Live the guide." A needle.
The Communist script, the antichatgpt declaration.
Asylum shelter/ psychiatric hospital/ asylum/ home
What's "scientific"?
Get out of the analysis room.
Art, the beginning of Human Surrender -- will aliens come again?
This is the last rehearsal! It's true!
Human Surrender, make me a whale. I have too little.
Human Surrender A Zoo and then you become a little girl...
Human Surrender R | "First Experiment in Beijing"
Human Surrender S. Zoo, everything is new.
Human Surrender K. Twirlings.
Human Surrender D. Zoo, one more time.
The Last Rehearsal commented that
Human Surrender disappeared from me - after the The Last Rehearsal.
"Communist scripts, obfuscation, prostitution journals -- answers."
"Show me alone, go, go again, and fire at me and at you."
Some interviews during the epidemic
I can't castrate myself. Dream.
"The History of Youth Violence in Tangshan"
"The Sons of Tangshan - a history of family suffering"
The communist scripts are "Long of the Tours."
"The Sons of Tangshan - The Dream of Mother"03
Self-inflicted project "Tangshan Youth - The Artist's Final Book"
The semantics of "Landbreeding": "Breeding" faithful to the object never existed, only the eternal reproduction of narcissism.
P4 Inputs to dental poetry: Preliminary interpretation of dark conceptual theory
The concept of the participants is vague, and he can be an audience, an actor, a critic, a director, a writer, an organizer, a food provider, a photographer, a projector, a microbutterer, and so on, all involved in this collective incident, with more people involved and entering, mixing, fermenting and waiting.
05
P4 Theater is the hatching ground for Beijing's underground drama, especially on our most closed days in 19-23, and p4 is still supporting and encouraging those who want to play without any resources or space. P4 let us know that it's not hard to do a play, and it's not in a fancy hall, and it's for everyone. Co-creation, premised on equality and mutual respect, is the source of creativity, and we can speak freely everywhere to summon our future.
Theatricals initiated by some of the participants (lined articles can be clicked)
I'd like to invite you to a playroom called "Rolling Stairs."
Su-soo's first appointment.
Recruiting actors for Glass Zoo.
"How can you do independent drama when you're so depressed?"
Prepare for Animal Farm in Café 510.
"Community Festival" 5.4 for the lawn!
Letter of invitation to recruit 510 Communities
Theatrical recruitment, and the recruitment for the role of Time Over has begun!
"The 101st" actor recruited a head-to-head to break through the meaning wall and burn the body down!
The first part of the book, reading the Concertation of Recruit, "Meet Me" (underline)
Recruiting.
Theatrical experience.
The meat grinder show party has begun.
How can I be with you?
Recruiting program - "The Fours"
Theatrical workshop recruitment.
Co-initiators recruit.
Together, we're recruiting, we're compiling the daily lives of ordinary people for 2,000 years.
I'm sorry.
Recruiting.
"The Old Sun On New Day"
The kingdom of happiness.
About burning the moon, or about what love is, or about broken and complete hallucinations.
Votes for the moonbreaker.
"The Moon"? Open relationship? Me and you? Did you break your fantasy or did you burn that fucking moon?
Behavior show, eight-point counter, looking for actors.
2.2-2.4 Night Construction Site "Eight Point" -- Glory Capital Project
Open tickets.
Sharon's Opening of 4.48 Mental Faults
Over the years, more and more independent theatres have been born, each with its own etiquette and its own radiance. Theatricals are part of life, a means of liberation, rather than locking themselves in cages and prisoners.
06
The workshop is the smallest part of the theatre, so that five or six people can begin to play what they belong to. P4 Everyone is encouraged to develop their own workshops to try to do something with visitors. Simple, easy, improvising, serious, workshops are a source of creativity and a bridge between people.
Some of the participants organized workshops
"Recovering lost feelings" workshop recruiting.
Embracing imagination improvising workshop recruitment.
Jumping a plane without a parachute to improvise.
The magic girl's teacup will be recruited in a spiritual awakening workshop.
P4 screening of Sunday painting healing - paper screening
"P4 art therapy" is the beginning of an artistic healing.
Let's use art to cure life.
P4 Screening of the winter special edition of the fire
The Red Deer Series -- night talk recruitment on stage.
Who said anything about a salon?
We're all recruiting for the Friday workshop.
improvisation class.
How to eat a banana?
I met you, I saw myself recruiting at the salon.
"Scolding the Audience" and "Theatrical Reading" will recruit.
Everything can be recruited in a dance workshop.
Breaking the Fourth Wall Forum Actor Recruitment
May 2nd, Zen, come to a exciting trial!
The studio recruiters bring your story to tell your story.
Nexus Theatre Creative Laboratories x P4 Theater text and limbs in the theater, freeing the creation shackles
Audience recruiting Operation Purple in the post-world, procreation is my freedom?
The North Winds Society's readings, recruiting 10 people.
Operation Purple, this Sunday, the wormhole is open. Body
Operation Purple, this Sunday, the Wisdom Theatre, let's be women together!
Operation Purple.
Theatrical recruiters before death have returned the light, and it's hard to die generously.
Let's split up again!
The improvisation, the death of love! The unknown will always hit you!
Operation Purple became 12 people this Sunday.
♪ improvise, twirl, fall in love ♪ Deep
This is Rhode Island.
We'll have to take off on Friday.
This Saturday, the charade lets your eyes pierce the barrier.
August 4th, Valentine's Day.
The classic theatre workshop, the "love" replays us.
Sleep at 10, X-P4 Theater.
Saturday party, Zhui invited you to a boat mobilization meeting for Black Cat Sheriff!
Underline workshop 2
Sunday activities mini-markets, old blind boxes, discounts, fake high-end markets, real-life activities, $1 entry, zero share.
Thursday seminar | Catali Psychoanalytic Third Study: BWO - Flow
Thursday workshop.
Thursday workshop, Labod and the ideal person - Qatar Psychoanalytic Workshop IV
Thursday workshop.
Saturday, the Freedom Salon, Zoo, feel the unconscious wind together.
The kingdom of Happiness, 517 days, come and be a doll!
Thursday workshop on the body and body of Lacan's psychoanalysis - dialogue between Lacan, Delhi and Qatar.
Film screening and communication.
On Tuesday, the book club was called "The Mythology" by Roland Bart.
Come and experience a blindfolded dream!
On New Year's Eve, the 16-year-old noise genius brought you into the new world. Dollar
p4 exhibition on "The Shit Family" - Abandoned Tangshan Youth
P4 has held more than a hundred workshops of all sizes. People filled each space with love. We can become what we want to become: free, not defined by others, becoming.
Ten years of P4 Theater were formed by the visits of tens of thousands of people. Without these friends, the name would be an empty tower. With our own actions we built a passage toward the impossible: toward love, loss, pain, and all the reasons that force us to keep living.
Recording is the reason P4 Theater exists. We have recorded almost every story that happened in the theater: the nervous anticipation when people first entered, the red-faced arguments during rehearsal, the laughter, revelry, and tears after performances. Theater happens not only onstage, but also offstage.
P4 turns the camera into a ghost: wandering, then freezing the instant when lives collide.
The trinity of film, theater, and documentary is P4's final direction. In the practice of Human Surrender, truth and fiction begin to blur and leap out of place; actor, role, and desire begin to intertwine and copulate; the cinematographer is no longer a third-party observer, and the relation between watching and performing has already shattered the position of the object through repeated distancing. I call this impasse cinema: an emotional tremor that must be faced at close range, a reality beneath theatrical performance, a simple, plain, pure presentation, a release under absolute trust. This is also what P4 Theater has taught me over these years, through rehearsal after rehearsal: the truest thing.
In ten years I went from twenty-five to thirty-five. Because of theater, my life was placed on a roller coaster that rose to the sky and plunged underground: tossed, spun, sunk, released. It forced me from an INTP into an ENFP; I began to learn to cry, to roar, to become hysterical, to speak bravely. Real life is filled with predicaments that demand compromise or escape. Perhaps if they are placed inside a play, even the fate that embarrasses me can have its moment of highlight. I long for these fragments of image to be witnessed in the future.
Finally, here is the link to the complete film Human Surrender. A VPN may be required. Thank you to everyone who has supported P4 Theater until today. Let us continue forward together, fighting to the end for our dreams and love.
https://vimeo.com/934438119
Password: 1234
Impasse Cinema Manifesto: Toward a Self-Recursive Life
When I
I
must make the final sound at the threshold between life and death, aim the camera at my own forehead, and press record.
I must put everything I have experienced, fantasized, lived, felt, and perceived wholly into film.
I do not know, and I do not guide, what will happen in the next second. We rehearse, pre-set, and drill for the day that will inevitably arrive.
I love you as I hate you.
The universe, time-space, me and you.
Film, filming
the retina, detached
staying, being forgotten
sound, very noisy
beside you, breathing
whispering, in the dark.
I am most disgusted by objectivity, by the pretense that everything is under control.
Passing through that extreme point, the pupil has already inverted the world; I am falling, trembling with you.
Vanishing into the sky and the sliding meteor, artificial fireworks imitate eternity.
It will always rise from the crack and let every expectation fall into the air.
Thrown upward, or thrown away, gathered into the arms to hear the echo of the abyss.
I cannot remain tough before the strange, yet I grieve before calm.
Short circuit and idle spin, ease or escape
existence, nothingness, madman and idiot
now, you and I are engraved on eternal film
forcing out the soul, wringing dry the body, flowing into the world.