'Now is the time': Bob Baker Marionette Theater to make Highland Park its forever home - BERITAJA

In 2019, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater needed a lifeline. Forced retired of its edge-of-downtown location of much than 55 years, the 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 the company, the 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 the looming extremity of the contract, remained a origin of accent for the nonprofit.

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater could exhale erstwhile again.

The saucy achromatic feline puppet successful a capacity astatine the 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 the area of York Boulevard and North Avenue 50, which had erstwhile incarnations arsenic a movie theatre and a Korean church. Once completed, the $5 cardinal acquisition will guarantee the theatre has a imperishable home, a spot wherever skateboarding clowns and leek-haired onions could proceed to frolic and creation for decades to come.

“This is monumental for us,” says Alex Evans, the 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 the York Theater successful 1925, hosting movies and vaudeville performances during that era. It about precocious housed the Pyong Kang First Congregational Church. Over the years it has besides been a barbershop and the tract of an organ income and repair store.

The acquisition comes astatine a celebratory clip for the troupe. While its yearly Bob Baker Day Festival astatine the Los Angeles State Historic Park had to beryllium postponed from April 12 to the autumn owed to a forecast of rainfall — the historical and vulnerable puppets cannot beryllium exposed to h2o — the institution still took its show connected the roadworthy to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Its adults-only May fundraising arena the Puppet Prom, which typically raises much than $30,000, is about sold out, and the 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 the coming weeks the theatre will motorboat its first caller show successful 40 years, “Choo Choo Revue.”

“Now is the time,” says Evans, who notes that while they person built caller puppets and tweaked existing shows, this is the first due caller accumulation since 1981’s “Hooray LA!” “We person the 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 the York Boulevard theater, the institution is initiating a caller information of fundraising. Bob Baker complete the past twelvemonth has raised $4.5 cardinal of the $5 cardinal acquisition price. It is seeking $500,000 to adjacent the spread arsenic good arsenic an further $2 cardinal for what it describes arsenic captious renovations, specified arsenic repairing the building’s tile and restrooms.

Some of the eccentric canines puppets.

(Chloe Rice / Bob Baker Marionette Theater)

Mary Fagot, Bob Baker’s co-executive director, says the theatre has successful spot a $500,000 indebtedness to guarantee the 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 the theatre had to enact to enactment afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the days of the shutdown, for instance, the institution was capable to raise $365,000 successful 365 days.

Rising rent, opportunity the co-executive directors, was a cardinal driving facet successful the determination to attack the building’s ownership to acquisition the space. This year, Bob Baker will salary adjacent to half a cardinal successful rent, an amount, says Evans, that is double the theater’s fund erstwhile it was successful its anterior abstraction adjacent downtown L.A. That, coupled pinch the 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 the owners of the building, and those evolved into this becoming a existent possibility,” Fagot says. “Then we started the difficult activity of talking to our biggest supporters about getting down us.”

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

A sidewalk capacity extracurricular the 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 the abstraction to the troupe. The dream erstwhile signing the lease, says Mikail, was that Bob Baker could someday beryllium group up to acquisition the venue.

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

“I deliberation we were the 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 the singing mushrooms.

“The show invites audiences to spell connected a train ride, wherever the 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 the extremity of the show group are inspired to beryllium much imaginative and to look astatine the world much beautifully.”

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