PuppetFest Midwest - First day at the festival

Trenton, Missouri

Walking up and down Kansas City Airport looking for the Puppet Festival pick up/meeting point for the bus to Trenton, I try to guess what puppet people look like - I really have no idea what to expect. So I proudly show/wear my Elmo T-shirt and smile at people, seeing if the shirt registers - but they look at me as if I’m strange....

After four trips up and down the airport - I finally stumble into a group of friendly looking people, all busily talking as excited as a bunch of preschoolers. These must be what puppet people are. I’m welcomed and praised for “coming ALL the way from Australia” and I feel right at home and just know it’s going to be a fun festival.

My new friends, Kathy and Heather

Finally, I’m on the bus to Trenton, Missouri. However, the drive gets further away from ‘city life’, passing fields and fields of greenery and huge rolled up hay balls... We even see some Amish people pass by in a horse and buggy! I’m having a few second doubts about where I’ve found my puppet journeys taking me... But hey, anything is better then hearing gun shots at night in Downtown L.A. right?

We finally get to the cute little, albeit ghost town, of Trenton and the college where the festival is held. Suddenly it’s like a stampede of elephants - no hang on - they're puppeteers! All swarming to get inside and I feel slightly overwhelmed... But I get to my dorm room to recollect myself and get to meet my wonderful room mate Van, I start to feel more and more at home. She was last years recipient of the scholarship that I now have, and we get along just great.

Phillip Huber and his puppets

*Phew* I can finally relax. I even take the ‘just in case’ money from out of my shoes and place it like a normal person in my wallet. It’s the little things that make you feel human again.

After we all settle, we have orientation, dinner (real American food) - we see the most amazing marionette puppet show I’ve ever seen. It was by world-class puppeteer Phillip Huber. At that point I was so in awe - I said; “This show alone was worth the entire trip to America and this is only the beginning!”

Partying late night...

That night we partied, like only a bunch of crazy puppeteers could. I wasn’t left alone for a second, because everyone wanted to talk to ‘that Australian girl’! I felt so overwhelmed by everyone’s open hearts and arms and how I was welcomed into a family of 50 other puppeteers. It was fantastic - I don’t think I’ve ever felt as welcomed into a community as I did that night.

I didn’t sleep that night. I was too overwhelmed and excited and couldn’t wait to start my ventriloquist class in the morning.

Bob Baker’s story

Bob Baker and I at his theatre

Bob Baker’s story - how he told it to me in a one-on-one conversation on the 3rd of July, 2010.  For more info on his life and theatre and performance credits - visit his website.

When Bob was 6 years old, already trained in piano and dramatics - he went to see a puppet show and was so entranced, he went back twice after, so he could understand how it worked.

Having an understanding mother, he received his first puppet and lessons in puppetry every Sunday for a year. After much training and passion, he did his first puppet show for the payment of $15 in the affluent Bel Air and continued on doing shows until WW2.

Bob went with his puppets to every movie star's home in Los Angeles, taught puppetry when he was in high school, manufactured puppets and became an accomplished Vaudeville performer before even turning 17.

When he turned 17, he was in the army airforce camouflage division, teaching camouflage to older men. After the war - he worked on movies, receiving credits as a puppeteer, alongside some of the world's greatest entertainers, such as Elvis Presley, Shirley Temple and Judy Garland, just to name a few. He was responsible for moving animated objects in box-office classics such as Bed Knobs and Broomsticks, Adams Family 2, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and many more (see his website).

He also became well-known as the ‘Butterfly Man’, when he would make little ‘butterflies’ with bits of mono-filaments or cellophane at the end of long rods and strings, and dangle them over dogs in order to get them to do tricks for the camera.

Bob was also one of the first people to start using Technicolor, and realised that TV could be a pre-recorded medium and not just live. This opened up a whole new world for the art of puppetry and his work appeared in many TV shows, television variety shows and commercials.

Bob also had a very fruitful manufacturing line and supplied puppets for large companies, such as Walt Disney.

More recently, Bob supplied a series of puppets for the animated motion picture The Polar Express. But after the company asked if they could have the copyright to his creations and Bob rejected them, they ended up ditching his puppets, while changing them only slightly to get out of crediting Bob.

Bob told me about his frustration with such practices and more generally with a world of computer-generated imaginary (CGI) and 3D animation. When I asked him what he thought of the future of puppetry and if it had a future, he gave me a cheeky smile as if he had been to the future and seen puppets being ingrained in entertainment again and
said; “We just need to wait it out”.

To hear this coming from a man in his mid-80s confirmed my own view that puppetry is much more precious than we may think it is and we all need to help keep this world alive.

Bob Baker Marionettes Theater

Bob Baker www.bobbakermarionettes.com

After what felt like the walk of my life, I finally arrived in what felt like heaven - The Bob Baker Marionettes. In hindsight, I should have taken a taxi, but a 20-30min walk from my hotel in the heart of Downtown L.A. looked so simple on Google Maps at the time.

I count my lucky stars that I made it through the bewildering alternate universe. Along my little journey I encountered one too many a gang of threatening looking kids with knives, one too many a shady character concealing things under their shirts and one too many open roofed cars pumping harsh rap music and yelling out to me if I wanted to join them...

Being a person who tends to get lost even with a GPS navigator - I felt a high probability of getting lost and ending up in situations I didn’t want to think about - so I found myself praying to any god, spirit or angel that would listen for me to not loose my way...

Miraculously, the spirits must have been watching over me - either that or pure fear and intuition helped me navigate my way through the nightmare and I only managed to turn the wrong way once. Headstrong and determined, I kept walking through sweltering heat with my head and my heart pounding as I cursed at myself for not spending a few extra dollars to take a taxi. But, at that point I had gone too far and there was no taxi or familiar sight to be seen and all I could do was keep going and hope it wasn’t much further.

But in the end, the journey was worth it, and in hindsight - it probably seemed much worse then it really was. Of course it helped tremendously that the journey’s reward was so very sweet, as I got to see the America’s oldest running 50 year old puppet theatre and also meet the legendary Bob Baker (now in his mid-80s) himself.

I was treated like a celebrity - being that I came ‘all the way from Australia’ and taken backstage to meet all the puppeteers and their puppets and see the workings of a theatre that is been built on pure love. From the 3000 puppets - each one was his child - to the hand-made coffee-can stage lights, this place has a real history and carries an immense sense of passion I’ve never felt anywhere else.

Most of all, the emotional warmth the theatre holds in such a cold part of town is striking and knowing it has survived the elements and surroundings for 50 years now, without losing any sense of pride and integrity, is truly astonishing.

Bob took me into his office and welcomed me like his long-lost granddaughter and told me about his life and how he got started and how he became what he is today while showing me all his photo-albums containing photo after photo of all his creations, like one would about his children, and the stories each of these characters held.

He opened his heart and explained how he still continues to this day to create theatre, tell stories and spread puppetry to the hearts of the youth today. Even though his arthritis-ridden fingers won’t let him manipulate his marionettes and his body won’t move the way he wants it to - this man carries more hope and faith in his work and the art of puppetry than anyone I have ever met. (read next blog entry for Bob’s story he told me).

The show I got to see was called “It’s a Musical World”, a musical variety show with music from Bob’s life and generation, performed with countless puppets by four young puppeteers who have trained under Bob.

I was fascinated to see a full house of people had come to see the show and that it was full of families with grandparents and all. Each person equally entranced by the movements and colour of the wonderful array of puppets and it was amazing to see that children as young as 2 years-old were enjoying music that was popular way before even their parents time.

You could almost say Bob has kept his theatre and acts so persevered, unmoved and uninfluenced by the fast pace of the outside world that you almost feel transported through time. Transported to a time where Bob was in his peak - performing variety shows for the rich and famous in their Beverly Hills homes, back in the era where cabaret and vaudeville variety acts were highly sought after. This only gives you a little insight of Bob’s integrity, pride, determination and love for his art.
 

But what struck me the most - that any notion that the show was ‘out of date’ was countered by its success, as evidenced by the fact that Bob’s puppets could inspire children and adults of any age in any time or any generation.

Here is a video (not of the show I saw) of a Bob Baker Marionettes show.