The production proves that challenges can be overcome and creativity can triumph over obstacles.
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater ’s “ Choo Choo Revue ” arrives at a pivotal time for the troupe, which is in the process of buying its Highland Park home.
The show is its first new work in 45 years and the first to be created without its legendary founder. The Bob Baker Marionette Theater was about to debut its first new production in 45 years, and it was uncertain whether one of the show’s signature new puppets would even work. A pelican, with an oversized bucket-like beak, was in need of last-minute maintenance.
This gangly bird, designed to hop, skip, soar and sing to Clarence Henry’s mid-’50s rhythm and blues hit “Ain’t Got No Home,” was supposed to surprise the audience, as its elongated bill is actually hiding a frog. Getting the pelican-frog duo to perform in unison was a feat of mechanical artistry for the team, not to mention the choreography needed by the puppeteer. And in the minutes before showtime, director Alex Evans was trying to stay calm.
In such moments, he would say later, he only need remind himself of an old adage in the puppet arts.
“I always say I love the chaos of live theater,” Evans says. “We got to believe in this thing. ” “Choo Choo Revue,” the latest in a long line of song-and-dance productions, is arriving at a momentous time for the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. Just last month the troupe announced its intenton Highland Park’s York Boulevard for $5 million, doing so as it was gearing up for performances at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
The latterAn organist plays while people file into the premiere of “Choo Choo Revue” at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. In many ways, “Choo Choo Revue” is a statement piece. Evans, who also serves as co-executive director with Mary Fagot, wants to place the spotlight on the theater’s current crop of artists, fabricators and collaborators.
While the show pays tribute in many ways to the theater’s legendary namesake founder, perhaps most notably in its use of his vintage record collection, it’s time, Evans says, for the Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s next generation to shine. Evans was instrumental in the decision to shift the team away from the previously announced production of “Arabian Nights,” a project once spearheaded by Baker,.
Just ahead of the arrival of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the theater had gone so far as to print an “Arabian Nights” program, and had finished sets and puppets ready to go. During the forced closure, however, the team began to rethink its future.
“It was a deep-breath time to do some internal thinking about who we are and what we want to prioritize,” says Evans, who joined the company in 2007 as a volunteer and became a staffer in 2009. “The first new show in 40 years — us finishing one of Bob’s shows would have been deeply personal and meaningful, but it would have kept the narrative, internally and externally, that this was one person’s vision,” Evans says.
“‘Choo Choo’ is the culmination of so many different ideas and people. It was purposefully about opening the floodgates, that Bob Baker could be more than just the person of Bob Baker. ”It wasn’t a sure thing the Bob Baker Marionette Theater would even reach this milestone. For much of the past decade — since about the death of the theater’s patriarch — the narrative surrounding the theater was one of survival.
In 2019, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater needed a lifeline. Forced out of its edge-of-downtown home of more than 55 years, the beloved troupe with its thousands of handcrafted puppets — a saucy black cat in heels, a fish out of water that can’t help but wiggle — ultimatelyThis California theme park inspired Disneyland, Bob Baker Marionettes — and tickets are $19 Oakland’s Children’s Fairyland, which turned 75, is an argument that storytelling, combined with old-fashioned play, has a timeless appeal.
Then came the pandemic, when the theater relied heavily on community fundraising to cover its rent. California, and Hollywood in particular, has a rich puppetry tradition. Bob Baker Marionette Theater likes to refer to itself as the largest ongoing puppet theater in the U.S. The oldest puppet space in the countryat amusement park Children’s Fairyland. And in 2020, Bob Baker found it had many fans, asking at one point to raise $365,000 over the course of a year.
It did so in four weeks. Old favorites, including the theater’s famed black cat marionette, make appearances in “Choo Choo Revue. ” But it was the long process of buying its home, namely the belief that it would be in Highland Park to stay, that gave the company the confidence that it could go forward with a new show. The obvious question, of course, is why it took 40 years for a completely fresh Bob Baker experience.
Evans gives a long answer, pointing to numerous hurdles, be it the shift in locations, the cost of preserving its historic puppets and collection, as well as just managing priorities.
“It’s not necessarily a financial hurdle,” Evans says, noting “Choo Choo Revue” cost $300,000, with about half of that sum dedicated to the creation of new puppets and scenery. “I think it was more about priorities,” Evans says. “Like, do we get the staff healthcare first, or do we do a new show first? So we got the staff healthcare.
Or do we give the stage better lighting. ”Inside Knott’s Berry Farm, a tiny theater boasts rowdy shows and alums like Steve Martin The historic Bird Cage Theatre, a place for vaudeville-style, fourth-wall-breaking shows, just reopened with a properly enclosed roof and air conditioning. As for how and why the team settled on “Choo Choo Revue” as its first production since 1981’s “Hooray LA! ,” Evans says not to overthink it.
“It made me giggle,” he says. “It was a jumping off point to imagination. ‘Choo Choo Revue,’ by name itself, I thought to giggle. ”A meticulously detailed log with windows, for instance, or a car that seems to balance natural, mountainous wonders on its back.
They’re colorful playthings, at least until the background scenery starts depicting various locomotive styles. Puppeteers will whisk train cars out into the open, each often housing a fantastical creature — a moose, for instance, who takes a break from knitting to prance around to a rendition of the on-theme traditional blues ditty “Midnight Special. ” Behind it all are tens of thousands of hours of handcrafted proficiency. Each new puppet is a work of art.
Take, for instance, a swarm of bats that seemed to glow in the dark . The Bob Baker Marionette Theater created more than 100 new puppets for “Choo Choo Revue,” including a pelican hiding a frog in its beak. Or an intricately detailed cicada band. They’re each playing tiny instruments — one a half-open sardine can, another a stringed matchbook.
Their wings deserve a close inspection, as the translucent curved fixtures are inspired by stained glass windows. There are trees that ski, and train whistles with big lips and high heels, modeled after harmony group the Andrews Sisters. Wait till the latter toot off their tops, as each of the 100 new puppets is full of surprises.
“We get a bunch of different artists together, and we all brainstorm,” Evans says of the creation process. “Like, ‘Let’s all think for a second about anthropomorphizing trains. ’ We did a series of sketches and showed them to each other. I honestly probably have a thousand different fascinating ideas for train movement.
” On opening night, the crowd claps along to the numbers, cheering with delight at each new piece of whimsy that rolls or soars onto the floor-level stage. And as for the showstopping pelican, the frog erupts out of its beak right on cue, a moment that indeed inspires a round of laughter and childlike awe.
As the imaginary train whisks the puppets around the country, the show manages to build anticipation just by making the crowd wonder what comes next. Say, for instance, a fluffy Sasquatch, or a crooner of a moon in pajamas singing an old-timey lullaby to all the little ones seated cross-legged on the floor. Much of “Choo Choo Revue,” like the yawning, serenading moon, is rooted in the music of the past.
That was a decision made to ensure the show feels in line with earlier Bob Baker works. Yet Evans says the team is emboldend after Coachella to start tackling more contemporary songs at its Highland Park headquarters. The crowd at the Indio festival, for instance, went wild for the puppets “Honestly, if we had done Coachella last year, it would have pushed ‘Choo Choo’ further,” he says, noting he initially feared pop music could distract.
“I didn’t think it could work in a way that wouldn’t throw you out of the show. ” And yet Evans doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. He nearly teared up at the end of the “Choo Choo Revue” premiere, saying the following afternoon that seeing this show come together after multiple years was second only to his 2025 wedding in terms of creating an “overwhelming feeling of pride, love and care.
” “Choo Choo Revue” culminates in a look toward the future. That’s when a sleek, silver, oversized high-speed bullet train arrives on the scene.
While the nonprofit is still seeking donor help — at the premiere, Fagot said the company now has secured $4.7 million toward its $5 million goal of buying the theater and it also hopes to raise an additional $2 million for building upgrades — its future is more secure than it has been at any time over the past decade. Evans, for instance, can’t help himself excitedly tease a potential next Bob Baker show.
He says twice in the interview that the Olympics are on the troupe’s mind. Todd Martens is a features columnist at the Los Angeles Times who writes about theme parks and West Coast Experiences, among other topics. His weekly newsletter,, covers the ever-changing world of theme parks from SoCal. Martens joined the Los Angeles Times in 2007 and has covered a mix of interactive entertainment as its game critic and pop music as a reporter and editor.
Previously, he reported on the music business for Billboard Magazine. Carlin Stiehl received his bachelor’s degree in film and television with a concentration in marine sciences from Boston University, where he specialized in narrative documentary storytelling, and is completing his master’s at Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication. Previously, he worked in media production in Ethiopia, the Chesapeake Bay Program, MLive, the Boston Globe and for the Los Angeles Times.
Get a first look at the immersive art exhibit that takes over 80 rooms in a shuttered downtown L.A. hospital
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