Just a block north of busy eateries and clothing shops on York Avenue, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Highland Park is serving entertainment in an artform you don’t often see in L.A.
Colorful, dancing puppets and music kind of sound like a perfect time just for kids. But ….maybe for some adults too.
I was recently convinced by my producer Victoria Alejandro to check out the storied space and a performance that’s been going on for decades. ¡Fiesta!, which is exactly what it sounds like, is a puppet show based on fictional characters with bilingual and bicultural flair that even I was moved by — and I’m a millennial with no kids.
The theater's history
First, a little history of the theater. Bob Baker, who created ¡Fiesta!, was born and raised in L.A. He started puppeteering when he was 8 years old.
-
Nonprofit's launching fundraiser to keep it afloat
-
USC study documents what residents want from trees
-
What candidates can — and can't — say they do
It led to a decades-long professional career of building puppets, working in Hollywood and training new talent. Baker and his puppeteering partner opened their own theater in Echo Park in 1963. In 2013, the property was sold to a real estate investor, and the troupe started looking for a new home.
The Echo Park location closed at the end of 2018, and the Bob Baker Theater reopened in Highland Park in 2019.
¡Fiesta! was written about 50 years ago by Baker as a “love letter to Latin America.” It was his tribute to the many Latino puppeteers that he worked with.
And the show really does feel like a celebration. Every scene and song is rooted in Latino American culture. There are all sorts of puppets in the play: pink sassy cats, charismatic birds, cacti with hidden flowers in their arms, and even a puppet of a woman singing “Amor Eterno” by a Día de los Muertos altar.
New directors, new show
Times do change though and the original ¡Fiesta! was getting a little, well, dated. Enter directors Daisy Hernandez and Karina De La Cruz, who updated and re-envisioned the show. Both of them are also homegrown Angelenos who grew up near the theater and would visit as kids. It inspired them to become puppeteers.
The scenes, the puppets, the songs mostly have the essence of what Baker sought to accomplish — a tribute to Latino American culture — but now some of the punchlines that aged badly are gone.
“As soon as we took on the opportunity, it almost became easy because I think our main priority was making a show that really reflects the community here in Los Angeles,” De La Cruz says. “I just wanted to make something that every generation could be proud of. That also celebrates the past, but then invites and is more inclusive of the future generations.”
De La Cruz and Hernandez say that the updates were done with people in mind, a reflection of the city and the puppeteers they’ve come to know over the years.
“It was very helpful to see, when I was growing up, the people that were puppeteering were also Brown puppeteers,” De La Cruz says. “I think that was my first exposure to seeing Brown folk be creative in that way”
Updating the show for new audiences
De La Cruz and Hernandez did a lot of research to update the show. One major change to an existing scene was redoing the costumes for a Mariachi number. The team met with queer Los Angeles-based Mariachi band Mariachi Arcoiriz and spoke to the leader of the troupe to talk about how to highlight the LGBTQ+ community.
They also created a new (and really cool) sequence celebrating Día de los Muertos.
The number involves beautiful and spooky skeleton puppets coming to life, and doing unbelievable tricks for the audience. De La Cruz also works in puppet fabrication, and took the lead on making all-new puppets for that number.
They also added a special tribute to Baker himself in the new sequence. One of the skeletons is a puppeteer wearing an apron and crocs, and he’s got a little skeleton marionette.
“We wanted to include him, and he wore that red apron really late in his life,” De La Cruz says. “So that's how a lot of people remember him.”
Some of the puppets are queer lip sync stars. One of the puppets in ¡Fiesta! is a big pink cat with lipstick and eyeliner singing along to an old Miss Piggy performance.
“We have another puppeteer, Diego,” Hernandez says. “He took one of the pink cats to DragCon and was very popular out there. So the cats love to be out like that.”
The two directors found this art form of puppetry in their own communities, their neighborhoods, and that sense of connection to them remains to this day.
“One thing to say about the theater is it's a safe space,” added Hernandez. “Even me straight outta high school, barely learning that I'm lesbian. I can go to this theater and ‘Oh, there's another gay puppeteer there, or there's another Brown person there, or another like lesbian puppeteer’… I feel like it's such a big open space that when you do come in, you automatically connect with people.”
How to see the show
¡Fiesta! is currently running every weekend through the end of June.
Location: Bob Baker Theater
Address: 4949 York Boulevard, Los Angeles
MORE INFO
