Bob Baker Marionette Theater and My Personal History with Puppets

Kristen attends 'Hooray LA' at The Bob Baker Marionette Theater.

This week, I want to tell you about how seeing a puppet show made me excited to live in Los Angeles. On Saturday, we went on a double date with our friends Sahar and Kyle to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, the oldest children’s theater company in LA. I’m sure some people are double dating to the movies or to nice restaurants, but I think there’s something to be said for two child-free married couples going to an event where half the audience is sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor. 

Bob Baker Marionette Theater

I’m a surprisingly puppet-friendly person. I say surprisingly, because magicians freak me out, and spiritually, magicians are probably the closest cousins to puppeteers. But I have a soft spot for puppeteers, because… I used to be one.

Around the ages of 9 to 11, I performed as Christian clown and puppeteer. When I describe this period of my life, Jason looks at me as if he married a stranger. To be fair, the memories are strange to me, too. They come on like Vietnam flashbacks. Suddenly, I’ll have a vision of myself setting my greasepaint make-up using a sock filled with baby powder. Who told me to do this? Did I give myself baby powder cancer? Was there no setting spray in the nineties? I have no answers. 

My Baptist church had a clown and puppet ministry of mostly adult performers, and around the third grade, I saw them perform, and it gave me a feeling I would come to know again and again (in high school theater, at UCB, watching SNL)--”I want to do exactly what they’re doing, and nothing will stop me from doing what they’re doing.” I was fairly religious back then, so I can’t say how much of this was my wish to spread the word of God through a joyful medium vs. how much was a naked desire to perform on a stage to uproarious applause. But… I’ll be generous and guess 10/90.  

My clown name was Jellybean, and my mom sewed my costume so artfully that I can still wear it. Here I am at a sketch show in 2016 horrifying both the audience and the man who legally vowed to love me forever.  

I asked for my accompanying puppet for Christmas. It cost $100 and was handmade by a local puppet artisan (Black Mountain, NC, is there anything you don’t have?) according to my specifications: red hair, pale skin, brown eyes. Why did I want a puppet that looked exactly like me? What was I working through? What am I still working through? Is the life I have enough? Will it ever be enough? 

Anyway. 

My puppeteering career didn’t last long enough for the puppet purchase to be worth it. I think I fell out of love with it when I realized holding a puppet over your head makes your arm sore and isn’t as fun as staying home and watching the same 26 episodes of Salute Your Shorts over and over. But, at least for a while, Jellybean and my puppet performed at churches, nursing homes, children’s events, and, I wanna say, parades? We did clown things–wore red noses attached with spirit gum–and Jesus things–made our puppets sing classic songs like “I Will Follow Him” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” but with lyrics slightly reframed to be about God. 

All of this to say, I have a real appreciation for the artform. And I especially love the delicious creepiness of marionettes. Walking into the Bob Baker Theater in Highland Park feels like entering a mid-century fever dream. We were there for their show Hooray LA, a celebration of all things Los Angeles. First performed in 1981 for the Los Angeles Bicentennial, Hooray LA tells LA’s history from prehistoric times to the 1933 earthquake to the invention of the freeways. I was not disappointed. There was, of course, the delicious creepiness I was craving–a wooly mammoth falls into the La Brea Tar Pits, and its fossilized bones are played like a xylophone by glow-in-the dark ghosts. 

But there was also supreme joy. Like mice depicting the Golden Age of Radio;

Two lonely mountain lions searching for love in Griffith Park;

And dogs and mice singing about what they think LA is.

The show ended as every Bob Baker Marionette show does–with ice cream for everybody! We carried ours outside, and as we tucked in, we talked about how this is the kind of thing that makes us love living in LA. All four of us moved from New York during the pandemic, and so much of our experience has been getting to know LA very slowly and close to home. This newsletter is all about making myself leave the house, something I used to take for granted, and seeing this fun, semi-psychedelic, kitschy show affirmed that. 

On the drive home, I told Jason that something about seeing three marionette cabaret cats perform Liza Minelli’s “City Lights” gave me that feeling. The “I want to do exactly what they’re doing” feeling. He gave me a look.

I guess we’ll see how long the strike lasts.

Hooray LA runs until September 10.