Children Find Fun at Their Fingertips

It’s a safe bet that most of the preschoolers watching a puppet show at the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center on Sunday were familiar with Elmo, Oscar and Big Bird.

It’s equally likely, though, that their knowledge of puppetry didn’t extend beyond what they had seen on the tube.

To bring the art of puppetry closer to children, the community center invited puppeteers and ventriloquists from the Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry to its Puppet Jamboree, which featured performances, demonstrations and puppet-making.

“We thought that this was a good way to expose children, their parents and the community to the art of puppetry,” said Janet Stern, cultural arts director at the center. “The children can see puppets up close and talk to the puppeteers about how they work.”

The daylong event was part of the community center’s annual performing arts series, which presents numerous live performances, including Broadway musicals, jazz concerts and Yiddish theater.

Some 200 people gathered at the center on Burbank Boulevard to watch performances by 14 puppeteers, make puppets and attend lectures such as “Public Marketing, Show Promotions and Advertising Puppet Shows” and “Puppets Around the World.”

Elderly people, young parents, toddlers and infants were in the audience as Bob Baker’s zany cast of marionettes performed “Something to Crow About.”

Rather than performing onstage against a black backdrop, Baker asked the audience to sit in a semicircle as he performed in the center. The theater-in-the-round effect allowed the crowd to get a closer view of how he manipulated the strings that moved the various marionettes.

The crowd seemed to forget that Baker was there as they sat seemingly mesmerized by a white polar bear marionette gliding across the floor in a mock figure-skating routine. They were equally enthralled by a girl marionette named Elois who “lived” in a New York City high-rise and spent all her time gossiping about her neighbors.

“Puppets seem to have a universal appeal that reaches out to people of all ages,” Stern said. “We really wanted to attract a cross-section of people.”