The Bob Baker Marionette Theater — the
country’s longest-running puppet theater — has found a new space that seems
like a natural fit.
Matt Stromberg
LOS ANGELES — This past May, a small team was busy putting the
finishing touches on the new home of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los
Angeles’s Highland Park Neighborhood. An artist painted a bucolic scene of
rolling green hills on the walls, while a group of workers on a scissor lift carefully
hung a large chandelier from the ceiling. A Wurlitzer organ on loan from the LA Theatre Organ Society sat covered in
plastic waiting to be unwrapped. Bunches of marionette puppets hung on racks,
though the majority were still at the location the theater had occupied for
over 50 years on First Street in the Westlake District. “The last thing that
hasn’t moved over which gives me stress dreams are the puppets,” said Winona
Bechtle, the theater’s director of development and community outreach. “They’re still at
the old spot. All 3,000 puppets.”
Los Angeles native Bob Baker became infatuated with puppets at age
seven after his father took him to a Christmas puppet show at the Barker Bros.
Department Store at Flower and 7th Streets in Downtown Los Angeles. He started
his own “Petit Theatre” in his backyard while still a child, and began his
career as an animator and puppeteer for various studios, including Disney. In 1963, he and partner Alton Wood opened the Bob Baker Marionette Theater
in a former scenic shop on the border of Echo Park and Westlake. Over the ensuing
decades, over one million children would be entertained by Baker’s original
puppet productions. Although Baker died in 2014 at the age of 90, his devoted
company continues to honor his legacy at the oldest children’s theater in Los
Angeles.
The new space — originally a silent movie theater, known as the
York Theatre, dating back to 1923 — seems like a natural fit for the country’s
longest-running puppet theater. But last fall, the company’s future was
anything but guaranteed. Faced with economic uncertainty, Baker sold the
original building to a developer in 2013 for $1.3 million. A planned mixed-use
development on the site originally included the theater, which was designated a
Historic-Cultural Monument by the Los Angeles City Council in 2009. However,
later proposals for the new property drastically reduced the theater’s size.
With no guarantee that their longtime home would be viable even after the
construction dust settled, Bechtle and Alex Evans, the executive director and
head puppeteer, decided to jump without quite knowing where they would land.
“We closed just willing this into existence with nothing behind it other than a
lot of work and knowing that we wanted to do it,” Bechtle said. A closing
ceremony was held last November 23, the same date that the theater opened 55
years earlier.................
https://hyperallergic.com/516917/bob-baker-marionette-theater-reopens-los-angeles/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20091919%20-%20Can%20This&utm_content=Daily%20091919%20-%20Can%20This+CID_181ca4403ab2e9a589ce013c8d112c2a&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario