At first, there is only a sound.
A person on a rooftop keeps crying out: ‘Ah.’
No explanation. No slogan. No demand.
The Howler on the Rooftop was presented at P4 Theater on January 2, 2021, as a one-time performance.
In it, this unclaimed sound becomes the most crowded thing in the room.
Liu Du searches for the source because it will not let him sleep, work, or remain alone with his own ambition.
When he finally reaches the rooftop, he does not meet an answer.
He meets a person whose voice refuses to become a sentence.
That should leave the sound open.
Instead, everyone rushes to close it.
A worker says the Howler cries for workers.
A painter claims art. A musician claims music. A writer claims literature. A lawyer claims the law.
The neighbor calls it a nuisance. The police call it a disturbance. A reporter calls it a headline.
The voice has not changed.
The listeners have.
Each uses it as a mirror.
This is the trap at the center of the play.
A sound without words appears available to everyone, so everyone assumes it belongs to them.
They do not ask what the Howler needs.
They give the howl a meaning that confirms their own position.
Listening becomes a way of speaking through someone else.
Then the city does what it knows how to do.
It classifies the voice, publicizes it, worships it, and tries to silence it.
What it cannot do is remain beside the voice without turning it into something useful.
Even sympathy can become another way of taking possession.
The production process makes this harder, not easier.
P4U brought strangers together through a short rehearsal process, while the 3P group recorded interviews and reactions around the work.
The surviving accounts do not agree.
Some participants loved the freedom and the people they met.
Others described confusion, insecurity, pressure, or the wish to leave.
One participant called the project more an action than a play.
Another asked whether repeated demands for improvisation really gave people with different experience an equal chance to speak.
That disagreement is not a flaw to edit out.
It is the second howl.
The stage asks what happens to a voice with no language.
The archive asks what happens to a voice that has language, has been recorded, and still may not change the next decision.
A microphone can preserve dissent. It cannot, by itself, answer it.
By the end, the howl is no longer securely attached to one body.
It passes through the company.
Violence does not settle its meaning.
The sound remains because the problem remains.
The real question is not: What does the Howler represent?
Can a community let a voice remain someone else’s before turning it into everyone’s symbol?
A voice needs more than visibility.
It needs a listener who can resist speaking for it.
If listening is real, something after the listening must be allowed to change: a rehearsal, a rule, a relationship, or the right to leave.
Otherwise the voice is not heard.
It is only used.