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

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 with its thousands of handcrafted puppets — a saucy achromatic feline successful heels, a food retired of h2o that can’t assistance but wiggle — yet recovered a caller determination successful a Highland Park theater.

Signing a 10-year lease was a suspiration of alleviation for the company, the effect 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 tin exhale erstwhile again.

The saucy achromatic feline puppet successful a show astatine the Bob Baker Marionette Theater.

(Chloe Rice / Bob Baker Marionette Theater)

The theater’s enforcement squad said it has entered into an statement to acquisition its existent determination astatine the country 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 volition guarantee the 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, 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 aboriginal is acceptable 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 astir 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 fragile puppets cannot beryllium exposed to h2o — the institution inactive took its amusement connected the roadworthy to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Its adults-only May fundraising lawsuit the Puppet Prom, which typically raises much than $30,000, is astir 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 determination successful a walkable vicinity with young families.

And successful the coming weeks the theatre volition motorboat its archetypal caller amusement successful 40 years, “Choo Choo Revue.”

“Now is the time,” says Evans, who notes that portion they person built caller puppets and tweaked existing shows, this is the archetypal due caller accumulation since 1981’s “Hooray LA!” “We person the unit to instrumentality it. We person a sustainable concern 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 with its intent to unafraid the York Boulevard theater, the institution is initiating a caller circular of fundraising. Bob Baker implicit 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 extortion 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 privation to to statesman its caller epoch with debt.

“We deliberation it’s an achievable gap,” Fagot says, pointing to assemblage 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 rise $365,000 successful 365 days.

Rising rent, accidental the co-executive directors, was a cardinal driving origin successful the determination to attack the building’s ownership to acquisition the space. This year, Bob Baker volition wage adjacent to fractional a cardinal successful rent, an amount, says Evans, that is treble the theater’s fund erstwhile it was successful its anterior abstraction adjacent downtown L.A. That, coupled with 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 gathering owners.

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

Bob Baker, founded successful 1963 by its namesake puppeteer, present attracts much than 145,000 assemblage members per year, including astir 20,000 students via schoolhouse tract trips. Funding for the gathering 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 show extracurricular the Bob Baker Marionette Theater featuring ladybug puppets.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“I’m arrogant to person played a tiny portion successful helping safeguard specified a beloved instauration that has enriched Los Angeles for decades,” says Brian Mikail of Capstone Equities, which rents the abstraction to the troupe. The anticipation erstwhile signing the lease, says Mikail, was that Bob Baker could someday beryllium acceptable 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 acceptable to unfastened May 16 and volition diagnostic much than 100 marque new, handcrafted puppets. Look, for instance, for a conductor with 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 volition alternatively autumn for the singing mushrooms.

“The amusement invites audiences to spell connected a bid ride, wherever the amusement is looking retired of a bid 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 anticipation is by the extremity of the amusement radical are inspired to beryllium much originative and to look astatine the satellite much beautifully.”

There’s besides a wide hunger for the benignant of whimsical, family-friendly amusement that the 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 the COVID pandemic lone 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 creativity and privation to bash it together, and that is what we do.”