'now Is The Time': Bob Baker Marionette Theater To Make Highland Park Its Forever Home

In 2019, nan Bob Baker Marionette Theater needed a lifeline. Forced retired of its edge-of-downtown location of much than 55 years, nan beloved troupe pinch its thousands of handcrafted puppets — a saucy achromatic feline successful heels, a food retired of h2o that can’t thief but wiggle — ultimately recovered a caller location successful a Highland Park theater.

Signing a 10-year lease was a sigh of alleviation for nan company, nan consequence of a lengthy hunt that included much than 80 spaces and ensured its playful, fanciful shows would proceed to beryllium a multigenerational, SoCal tradition. But yearly rises successful rent, arsenic good arsenic nan looming extremity of nan contract, remained a origin of accent for nan nonprofit.

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater tin exhale erstwhile again.

The saucy achromatic feline puppet successful a capacity astatine nan Bob Baker Marionette Theater.

(Chloe Rice / Bob Baker Marionette Theater)

The theater’s executive squad said it has entered into an statement to acquisition its existent location astatine nan area of York Boulevard and North Avenue 50, which had erstwhile incarnations arsenic a movie theatre and a Korean church. Once completed, nan $5 cardinal acquisition will guarantee nan theatre has a imperishable home, a spot wherever skateboarding clowns and leek-haired onions tin proceed to frolic and creation for decades to come.

“This is monumental for us,” says Alex Evans, nan theater’s co-executive director. “It’s been decades of america struggling to survive. Now we’re astatine this infinitesimal wherever it’s not a struggle. It’s a blossoming infinitesimal wherever our early is group up forever.”

Bob Baker’s Highland Park location was primitively built arsenic nan York Theater successful 1925, hosting movies and vaudeville performances during that era. It astir precocious housed nan Pyong Kang First Congregational Church. Over nan years it has besides been a barbershop and nan tract of an organ income and repair store.

The acquisition comes astatine a celebratory clip for nan troupe. While its yearly Bob Baker Day Festival astatine nan Los Angeles State Historic Park had to beryllium postponed from April 12 to nan autumn owed to a forecast of rainfall — nan historical and vulnerable puppets cannot beryllium exposed to h2o — nan institution still took its show connected nan roadworthy to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Its adults-only May fundraising arena nan Puppet Prom, which typically raises much than $30,000, is astir sold out, and nan theater, which besides hosts movie screenings and concerts (with puppets, of course), continues to battalion successful afloat audiences — partially owed to its location successful a walkable vicinity pinch young families.

And successful nan coming weeks nan theatre will motorboat its first caller show successful 40 years, “Choo Choo Revue.”

“Now is nan time,” says Evans, who notes that while they person built caller puppets and tweaked existing shows, this is nan first due caller accumulation since 1981’s “Hooray LA!” “We person nan unit to instrumentality it. We person a sustainable business to beryllium capable to propulsion disconnected what is going to beryllium adjacent to a half-million-dollar accumulation to equine a caller show.”

In going nationalist pinch its intent to unafraid nan York Boulevard theater, nan institution is initiating a caller information of fundraising. Bob Baker complete nan past twelvemonth has raised $4.5 cardinal of nan $5 cardinal acquisition price. It is seeking $500,000 to adjacent nan spread arsenic good arsenic an further $2 cardinal for what it describes arsenic captious renovations, specified arsenic repairing nan building’s tile and restrooms.

Some of nan eccentric canines puppets.

(Chloe Rice / Bob Baker Marionette Theater)

Mary Fagot, Bob Baker’s co-executive director, says nan theatre has successful spot a $500,000 indebtedness to guarantee nan woody closes. Yet Bob Baker does not want to to statesman its caller era pinch debt.

“We deliberation it’s an achievable gap,” Fagot says, pointing to organization fundraising nan theatre had to enact to enactment afloat during nan COVID-19 pandemic. During nan days of nan shutdown, for instance, nan institution was capable to raise $365,000 successful 365 days.

Rising rent, opportunity nan co-executive directors, was a cardinal driving facet successful nan determination to attack nan building’s ownership to acquisition nan space. This year, Bob Baker will salary adjacent to half a cardinal successful rent, an amount, says Evans, that is double nan theater’s fund erstwhile it was successful its anterior abstraction adjacent downtown L.A. That, coupled pinch nan lease’s impending expiration successful a mates of years, acted arsenic a benignant of deadline to trade a connection that could entreaty to its building owners.

“We started to person discussions successful 2023 pinch nan owners of nan building, and those evolved into this becoming a existent possibility,” Fagot says. “Then we started nan difficult activity of talking to our biggest supporters astir getting down us.”

Bob Baker, founded successful 1963 by its namesake puppeteer, now attracts much than 145,000 assemblage members per year, including astir 20,000 students via schoolhouse section trips. Funding for nan building acquisition was secured, successful part, by gifts from nan Perenchio Foundation, nan Kohl Family Foundation, nan Ahmanson Foundation, nan precocious Wallis Annenberg, and personage donors specified arsenic Jack Black and Tanya Haden.

A sidewalk capacity extracurricular nan Bob Baker Marionette Theater featuring ladybug puppets.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“I’m proud to person played a mini portion successful helping safeguard specified a beloved institution that has enriched Los Angeles for decades,” says Brian Mikail of Capstone Equities, which rents nan abstraction to nan troupe. The dream erstwhile signing nan lease, says Mikail, was that Bob Baker could someday beryllium group up to acquisition nan venue.

The agreement, says, Fagot, is simply a win-win for some sides.

“I deliberation we were nan perfect owners for this space,” Fagot says. “If it’s for immoderate different purpose, it would request a elephantine transformation, and for us, it’s precisely what we need.”

“Choo Choo Revue” is group to unfastened May 16 and will characteristic much than 100 marque new, handcrafted puppets. Look, for instance, for a conductor pinch a timepiece arsenic a face, dancing luggage and a cicada jug band, among a big of different oddities. Expect, perhaps, a crescent satellite successful pajamas to beryllium a caller favorite. Or possibly audiences will alternatively autumn for nan singing mushrooms.

“The show invites audiences to spell connected a train ride, wherever nan show is looking retired of a train model and seeing flights of imagination,” Evans says. “It’s daydreams extracurricular of a window. Windmills tally around. It’s weird, fantastical abstractions of what’s possible. The dream is by nan extremity of nan show group are inspired to beryllium much imaginative and to look astatine nan world much beautifully.”

There’s besides a clear hunger for nan type of whimsical, family-friendly intermezo that nan theatre provides. Gross revenues topped $3.1 cardinal successful 2025, up from $699,211 successful 2018, according to its astir caller yearly report. Fagot says nan COVID pandemic only accrued nan request for nan “special marque of magic” that Bob Baker creates.

“People needed community,” she says. “They conscionable request joy. They request inspiration and productivity and want to do it together, and that is what we do.”