Showing love with puppets

Alzheimer's triggers a time-travel play that a photographer dedicates to his father. Chen Nan reports.

One day in 2014, photographer Ma Liang and his father, Ma Ke, went swimming.

Ma Ke, then aged 80, a former director of the Shanghai Jingju Theater Company, which specializes in Peking Opera, kept asking Ma Liang the same question for a long time: "Do you know backstroke?"

Ma Liang realized his father was forgetting things.

"He used to be the most powerful person in the family and I worshipped him," says the 46-year-old.

Soon his father was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's, and Ma Liang decided to do a stage production dedicated to him. The theater production, Papa's Time Machine, finally premiered in Shanghai in October and has been staged a few times since.

Papa's Time Machine will be staged in Beijing from April 21 to May 1, as part of the 17th Meet in Beijing Arts Festival, one of China's largest annual cultural gigs.

Instead of having real actors tell the story, Ma Liang uses puppets. The play's leading character, Maguji, who is a dreamer and a scientist, makes a time machine to help restore his father's memory. Through this journey, Maguji also returns to his childhood along with his father.

"My father wanted me to carry on with his career and he always told me he wanted to work in a theater production with me," says Ma Liang, who was born in Shanghai and graduated in arts and crafts from Shanghai University.

Ma Liang made two puppets to symbolize a father and his son. The main materials used were wood, iron and copper, which were held together by wires and wheels of various sizes.

The images for the two roles were inspired by the late German cartoonist E. O. Plauen's famous work, Vater und Sohn (Father and Son).

"My father bought the book for me when I was 10 years old or so. Though the book only has two characters, it became my favorite book," says Ma Liang, adding that his father is as "humorous and nice" as the father in the book.

Different from traditional puppetry, where small puppets are used, the characters Ma Liang made are life-size. The smaller of the two puppets is the average height of a 5-year-old boy, and is made of more than 1,000 parts. The bigger one is about 1.7 meters tall and made of more than 2,000 parts.

Unlike traditional puppetry, which has real actors hiding in the dark while controlling the puppets with strings or sticks, Papa's Time Machine has actors onstage alongside the puppets.

Ma Liang says because the puppets are heavy - the bigger one is around 8 kilograms - each puppet is controlled by two actors, which is quite a challenge for them.

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.

He has added elements of Peking Opera in the production - music and gestures - to show his cultural connection with his father. Ma Liang's father watched the show last year.

"He talked to me for a very long time and gave me a big hug after watching the show," says Ma Liang. "He loves the production. He remembers watching it."

From 2003, Ma Liang started working as an independent photographer after he had worked for years as an advertising designer.

One of his most famous and ongoing projects is Studio Mobile, which started in 2012. So far, Ma Liang has taken photos of more than 1,300 people across the country.

"I don't want to capture the reality because reality is cruel. I am keen to create a dreamlike scenario for the audience, just like Papa's Time Machine, which is a fairy tale for adults," says Ma Liang.

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn

If you go

7:30 pm, April 21-May 1. Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, 9 Tianqiao South Street, Xicheng district, Beijing. 400-635-3355.

Papa's Time Machine, directed by Ma Liang, will be staged in Beijing from April to May as part of the Meet in Beijing Arts Festival. Provided To China Daily