A script exists; shared working time still has to be found
In an interview published in September 2022, Cao Jiansong recalls that the script for BODY existed before the company came together. Writing can be done alone; rehearsal requires people who can keep attending. This reading follows his accounts of asking about availability, changing a casting requirement and communicating about participation, asking how shared work could begin.[S1]
The existing BODY reading examines how actors found playable relationships and points of support after the first reading. This essay asks an earlier question: how were people and available time reconsidered before that rehearsal work could take place? It reuses four published interviews; they are not newly discovered primary documents.[R1]
Ask about availability, then reconsider the casting brief
Cao recalls asking Wu Hao whether he could rehearse and learning that he worked during the day but was available in the evening. Wu also recalls explaining his daytime work and the time needed to travel in the evening during an initial approach. Both accounts place availability within the conversation about joining. They do not provide a word-for-word verification of one particular exchange.[S1][S3]
The director then describes a specific change: broadening a search for a male actor to applicants of either gender. After An Xirui sent a CV, he considered a pairing of two women; later he invited Wu again and received his agreement. Wu’s account also records another invitation and his acceptance. The account of arriving, and the interval of a few days, belongs to Wu alone.[S1][S3]
Casting appears here as a working condition that can be reconsidered: establish who can participate, then consider different pairings. This reading examines how production conditions enter a choice. It does not establish a change in artistic philosophy or explain the motives of people who did not continue.
Two recruitment accounts do not make one verified announcement
An says that the announcement she saw sought one female role. Her account and the director’s description of broadening the search can be read together. Without the different announcements and their revision records, however, their relationship remains unresolved.[S1][S2]
There is a more specific correspondence around application materials. An describes sending a CV and audition audio; Cao describes receiving her CV and hearing a spoken passage. Both accounts support an exchange of these kinds of material, but the recording has not been identified as the same file. Receiving the complete script, writing an analysis, submitting materials and beginning to discuss a first meeting are a sequence described by An herself.[S1][S2]
Keeping these distinctions preserves the practical preparation involved in joining, while leaving the missing announcement versions, submissions and meeting date unresolved.
A communication effort does not establish a permanent role
Cao also describes Gao Pengfei helping with communication about participation. This action is recorded only in the director’s account. Gao’s own interview does not independently confirm that communication or its outcome.[S1][S4]
Gao’s interview and the production credits identify his work in stage design and visuals. That formal credit and the locally described assistance can be recorded separately. The assistance does not establish a confirmed return to the company or justify adding an overall producer role.[S4]
A first reading, recalled by one participant
An explicitly says that her first meeting ended with her and Wu reading the script together for the first time. Among these four interviews, only she directly describes that shared action. Cao’s statement that the company could begin rehearsing and Wu’s account of arriving in a living room are not two additional confirmations of the same first reading.[S2]
This reading takes An’s account as a limited endpoint: preparation is recalled as becoming a joint reading. It does not establish that every creative difficulty was resolved. The existing essay follows later difficulties and adjustments in character and relationship work. A new pairing beginning to work does not, by itself, show that personnel changes improved the art.[R1]
Interpretation, dates and further viewing
The interpretation proposed here is that scheduling belongs within the creative process. Availability, casting requirements and textual preparation affect one another. They help explain how an existing script can become work that people can undertake together. This is an interpretation of retrospective accounts, not a judgment of anyone’s responsibility.
All four interviews in the series were published on 8 September 2022; that does not mean they were conducted on the same day. This essay retains the relative order within each account. The exact date of the first reading is unverified, and the different recruitment announcements, analysis, audition recording and first-reading work record remain unavailable for comparison. Credits, self-reports and accounts about others retain distinct evidential roles; nicknames are not used to identify additional attendees.
Two public BODY rehearsal access copies, registered to 6 and 8 September, provide further ways to observe performance and space.[V1][V2] This essay does not identify either as a record of the first reading or match the reported contacts, communication or casting adjustments to particular shots or timecodes.