An actor who also keeps a record
In Howlers on the Rooftop, the reporter is both a character and a figure in the rehearsal series. The first instalment introduces Zhao Lichen as the actor playing the reporter, with responsibility for part of the written documentation and publicity. She recalls watching rehearsals before Jinzi invited her to try the role. Her account comes from within the production: it records participation rather than a comprehensive outside view.[S1]
Holding water in an imaginary cup
The third instalment describes a specific exercise. Jinzi calls everyone onto the stage and asks them to close their eyes, keep moving until told to stop, and carry an imaginary cup without spilling its water. The cup has no physical form, but it gives movement a condition to sustain: the participant must continue to attend to what they are carrying.[S2]
We read this as a practical question in training: with sight temporarily withdrawn, how can an actor move, sense the space and maintain an imagined task? That is an interpretation of the published instructions. The account supplies neither a movement log for every participant nor a link between this exercise and a particular scene in the performance.
From guarding water to meeting someone
The account then changes form. In a poetic reflection titled Feeling the Elephant in the Dark, the writer describes touch, sound and shifts in direction before encountering another person moving with closed eyes. Imagined water spills; the writer asks the other person to share, then describes pouring the water they have guarded into another cup.[S2]
The turn in this passage is from maintaining a task alone to exchanging something with another person. It shows how one participant gives meaning to the exercise. The encounter and pouring remain part of that writer's expression; they cannot be treated as a step-by-step observation log or as evidence that everyone had the same experience.
Two runs and a different place to watch
A separate public interview moves the question to the eve of performance. The p4U interview introduces You Na and Zhouzhou as speaking less than 24 hours before the show. Zhouzhou recalls feeling insufficiently engaged during the first run that day. During the second, she watched from an audience perspective because she did not appear in the early scenes, and her response changed. She later clarifies that her positive judgment describes her own feeling.[S3]
You Na says that her character changed every day and that the initial script did not allow her to foresee the eventual presentation. Their remarks offer two scales of work: a role changes across rehearsals, while watching the whole piece can change an actor's understanding of their place within it. The sources do not establish that the closed-eye exercise caused these changes. Reading them together raises a question rather than proving a causal sequence.
Names attached to particular work
Responsibilities need to be read source by source. The first instalment identifies Zhao Lichen's reporter role and her partial documentation and publicity duties. The training account names Jinzi as initiating the exercise. The interview introduces You Na as playing Liu Du's girlfriend and Zhouzhou as the singer; the former is a fictional relationship.[S1][S2][S3]
In the interview, He Fa says he handled the overall photography that day.[S3] The earlier public collection Their Words, discussed in an existing study here, separately credits Ru Meng as initiator and playwright, Jinzi as director, Da Lin for sound design and Luo Chunping for stage design, and lists He Fa as a 3P group member.[R1] Each document establishes a particular scope. A day's photography does not establish exclusive authorship of the production's images, and nicknames in one account are not automatically merged with names in another list.
Entering the 78-minute viewing edition
The existing public access edition of Howlers on the Rooftop runs 78 minutes 25 seconds.[V1] Its viewing page retains chapter links for that edition. After reading the training account and interview, a viewer can follow how people move, how sound enters and how roles connect with the overall stage picture. These are questions for viewing; individual actions or moments have not been matched to the accounts here.
The three sources were published on 24 December 2020, 5 January 2021 and 18 January 2021. Although the training instalment appeared on 5 January, its narrative says the performance is approaching; the exact exercise date remains unknown. The interview is internally headed January 2021 and framed as less than 24 hours before the show. Publication dates are therefore kept separate from event dates. The exercise is not assigned to a particular run, and times from the 78-minute edition are not transferred to the older 46-minute cut or raw recordings.