May 28 - August 3, 2019
Bob's Petite Theater at OXY ARTS is the first public program following the Bob Baker Marionette Theater's announcement of its new home in Highland Park, and its first as a fully active nonprofit organization. The residency will open May 2019 and run through August 2019. The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is dedicated to educating, celebrating, and rejuvenating puppetry and the allied arts. The Theater's former venue of 55 years in Westlake, Los Angeles provided a place where the company could engage with and respond to the city around it. Now in a moment of transition and transformation, the Theater, in residence at Occidental College’s new community venue OXY ARTS from late May through August, looks back on the earliest ideas that grew into the organization it is today.
Housed in a makeshift workshop in his backyard, Bob Baker's first theater (named "Bob's Petite Theater") was a place where design, culture, and a singular vision met to create the framework that thousands of artists and audiences would contribute to over many years. Bob's Petite Theater at OXY ARTS is a place to recreate our founder Bob Baker’s earliest experiments with performance, fabrication and engagement, and share the creative resources at the heart of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater with our community. Through shows, workshops, and interactive activities for all ages, the Theater looks back on 55 years and seeks new ways to prepare for the next 50 following the closure of its original location and the opening of its new one. Join us as we communicate with and explore this extensive history and vision based in curiosity, imagination, and joy.
Bob’s Petite Theater at OXY ARTS will present a series of 10 free puppet shows followed by workshops on Tuesdays throughout the duration of this residency. In addition to these shows and workshops, Bob Baker staff, friends, artists, and puppeteers will host a variety of special events that inquire, celebrate, and examine the work that the Theater has done for decades and ways in which it can change and grow moving forward.