Each puppet is controlled by two actors onstage. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

Ma Liang founded a troupe in 2015 for Papa's Time Machine with the help of his wife, Huang Tianyi, who learned theater directing at the Central Academy of Drama.

"We called for actors online and were lucky to have some professional puppet performers join in," says Huang.

"Gradually members of the troupe also put their feelings for their own fathers into the show."

Shu Pengcheng, an actor in the show, learned puppetry at the Shanghai Theater Academy.

"The joints of the puppets, like those of real people, are very flexible. For example, the five fingers can move and grab things. It took me a very long time to work with a puppet and with the other actors controlling it," says Shu.

"There are two actors controlling one puppet and we have to think like one brain."

Asked why he used puppets for his first theater work, Ma Liang says he has been fascinated with them since childhood.