baker

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Secretary of State James A. Baker III admitted Friday that he was unable to dissuade Yugoslavia’s independence-minded republics from breaking up the 73-year-old federation.

“What I heard here today has not allayed my concerns, nor will it allay the concerns of others” in the U.S. Administration and the international community, Baker said after spending almost 10 hours in meetings with federal officials and the presidents of all six constituent republics.

Slovenia has announced that it will declare independence next Wednesday and Croatia has indicated that it will follow suit.

“We think the situation is very serious,” Baker said. “We worry about history repeating itself.”

Baker was clearly alluding to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo that touched off World War I, as well as a bloody civil war between Serbs and Croats that raged during World War II.

Speaking to reporters after talks with Prime Minister Ante Markovic, Baker called on all Yugoslavs to settle their differences peacefully without “violence or bloodshed or force.”

Although clearly directed at all contending parties, Baker’s words seemed to be especially intended as a warning against the use of military force by the federal government to prevent any of the republics from breaking away.

Markovic issued a veiled warning in a speech to the federal Parliament earlier in the day that his government might call in the army to block either Slovenia or Croatia from withdrawing from the federation.

He warned that if any republic declares unilateral independence, his government would “take measures which will secure the necessary conditions for settlement of problems democratically, through negotiations.”

The federal government has conceded that the complex Balkan nation must be restructured, but it objects to any of the republics withdrawing without the approval of the others. A fruitless series of negotiations among republic leaders broke down last month after the federal presidency collapsed when Serbian delegates refused to permit the Croatian representative to take his turn as president under the country’s unique rotation procedure.

Baker called for a resumption of the dialogue and for prompt action to fill the presidency. The presidential crisis aggravates a leadership vacuum at the federal level. Although generally supported by the international community, Markovic was not elected by the public and his economic policies have been widely ignored by the republics.

“We believe that everyone is interested in finding a way, through dialogue and negotiations, to craft a new basis of unity for Yugoslavia,” Baker said.

U.S. officials said that Washington will not take sides in the debate over restructuring the federation but will oppose strongly its breakup.

Baker said flatly that the United States would not recognize Slovenian independence if the republic goes through with its plans next week.

Slovenian President Milan Kucan yielded no ground in his meeting with Baker. He later told reporters that the republic has no intention of changing its independence timetable.

A federal government official from Slovenia, Ivo Vajgl, said that Slovenia’s Wednesday independence day is “not negotiable.”

Although the other republics might be willing to permit Slovenia to leave the federation, Serbia is adamantly opposed to Croatian independence because of the 600,000-member Serbian minority in Croatia. Moreover, relations between Serbia and Croatia have been strained for centuries, reaching their low point during World War II when more than half of the 1.7 million Yugoslavs who died were killed by other Yugoslavs.

Serbia has vowed to resist with all of its force any attempt by Croatia to leave the federation.

At least 24 people have died in ethnic violence in the last two months.

Yugoslav Foreign Minister Budimir Loncar, standing at Baker’s side, said that Yugoslavia is in “a very deep crisis, of very much concern to our old friends abroad.”

Earlier, Loncar was asked if Slovenia’s withdrawal would mark the end of Yugoslavia. He said Slovenia’s action will produce important changes “but the end of Yugoslavia, it will definitely not be.”

At the same time they are trying to head off independence movements, federal officials have sought to minimize the impact of the action.

Baker visited Belgrade immediately after a meeting of foreign ministers of the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which adopted a statement warning Yugoslavia that it risks losing international economic and political support if it breaks up.

In his talks in Yugoslavia, Baker emphasized that European leaders would ostracize independent republics. The Europeans are concerned that civil war in Yugoslavia would produce devastating consequences for its neighbors, including a probable wave of millions of refugees.

Secession of any Yugoslav republic also could rekindle ethnic animosities in other Eastern European countries such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

Baker said that he would confer with European leaders before deciding on his next step.

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 — ultimately found a new location in a Highland Park theater.

Signing a 10-year lease was a sigh of relief for the company, the result of a lengthy search that included more than 80 spaces and ensured its playful, fanciful shows would continue to be a multigenerational, SoCal tradition. But yearly rises in rent, as well as the looming end of the contract, remained a cause of stress for the nonprofit.

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater can exhale once again.

The saucy black cat puppet in a performance at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater.

(Chloe Rice / Bob Baker Marionette Theater)

The theater’s executive team said it has entered into an agreement to purchase its current location at the corner of York Boulevard and North Avenue 50, which had former incarnations as a movie theater and a Korean church. Once completed, the $5 million acquisition will ensure the theater has a permanent home, a place where skateboarding clowns and leek-haired onions can continue to frolic and dance for decades to come.

“This is monumental for us,” says Alex Evans, the theater’s co-executive director. “It’s been decades of us struggling to survive. Now we’re at this moment where it’s not a struggle. It’s a blossoming moment where our future is set up forever.”

Bob Baker’s Highland Park home was originally built as the York Theater in 1925, hosting movies and vaudeville performances during that era. It most recently housed the Pyong Kang First Congregational Church. Over the years it has also been a barbershop and the site of an organ sales and repair store.

The purchase comes at a celebratory time for the troupe. While its annual Bob Baker Day Festival at the Los Angeles State Historic Park had to be postponed from April 12 to the fall due to a forecast of rain — the historic and fragile puppets cannot be exposed to water — the company still took its show on the road to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Its adults-only May fundraising event the Puppet Prom, which typically raises more than $30,000, is nearly sold out, and the theater, which also hosts film screenings and concerts (with puppets, of course), continues to pack in full audiences — partly due to its location in a walkable neighborhood with young families.

And in the coming weeks the theater will launch its first new show in 40 years, “Choo Choo Revue.”

“Now is the time,” says Evans, who notes that while they have built new puppets and tweaked existing shows, this is the first proper new production since 1981’s “Hooray LA!” “We have the staff to implement it. We have a sustainable business to be able to pull off what is going to be close to a half-million-dollar production to mount a new show.”

In going public with its intent to secure the York Boulevard theater, the company is initiating a new round of fundraising. Bob Baker over the last year has raised $4.5 million of the $5 million purchase price. It is seeking $500,000 to close the gap as well as an additional $2 million for what it describes as critical renovations, such as repairing the building’s roof and restrooms.

Some of the eccentric canines puppets.

(Chloe Rice / Bob Baker Marionette Theater)

Mary Fagot, Bob Baker’s co-executive director, says the theater has in place a $500,000 loan to ensure the deal closes. Yet Bob Baker does not want to to begin its new era with debt.

“We think it’s an achievable gap,” Fagot says, pointing to community fundraising the theater had to enact to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the days of the shutdown, for instance, the company was able to raise $365,000 in 365 days.

Rising rent, say the co-executive directors, was a key driving factor in the decision to approach the building’s ownership to purchase the space. This year, Bob Baker will pay close to half a million in rent, an amount, says Evans, that is double the theater’s budget when it was in its prior space near downtown L.A. That, coupled with the lease’s impending expiration in a couple of years, acted as a sort of deadline to craft a proposal that could appeal to its building owners.

“We started to have discussions in 2023 with the owners of the building, and those evolved into this becoming a real possibility,” Fagot says. “Then we started the hard work of talking to our biggest supporters about getting behind us.”

Bob Baker, founded in 1963 by its namesake puppeteer, now attracts more than 145,000 audience members per year, including about 20,000 students via school field trips. Funding for the building purchase was secured, in part, by gifts from the Perenchio Foundation, the Kohl Family Foundation, the Ahmanson Foundation, the late Wallis Annenberg, and celebrity donors such as Jack Black and Tanya Haden.

A sidewalk performance outside the Bob Baker Marionette Theater featuring ladybug puppets.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“I’m proud to have played a small part in helping safeguard such a beloved institution that has enriched Los Angeles for decades,” says Brian Mikail of Capstone Equities, which rents the space to the troupe. The hope when signing the lease, says Mikail, was that Bob Baker could someday be set up to purchase the venue.

The agreement, says, Fagot, is a win-win for both sides.

“I think we were the ideal owners for this space,” Fagot says. “If it’s for any other purpose, it would need a giant transformation, and for us, it’s exactly what we need.”

“Choo Choo Revue” is set to open May 16 and will feature more than 100 brand new, handcrafted puppets. Look, for instance, for a conductor with a clock as a face, dancing luggage and a cicada jug band, among a host of other oddities. Expect, perhaps, a crescent moon in pajamas to be a new favorite. Or maybe audiences will instead fall for the singing mushrooms.

“The show invites audiences to go on a train ride, where the show is looking out of a train window and seeing flights of imagination,” Evans says. “It’s daydreams outside of a window. Windmills run around. It’s weird, fantastical abstractions of what’s possible. The hope is by the end of the show people are inspired to be more creative and to look at the world more beautifully.”

There’s also a clear hunger for the type of whimsical, family-friendly entertainment that the theater provides. Gross revenues topped $3.1 million in 2025, up from $699,211 in 2018, according to its most recent annual report. Fagot says the COVID pandemic only increased the demand for the “special brand of magic” that Bob Baker creates.

“People needed community,” she says. “They just need joy. They need inspiration and creativity and want to do it together, and that is what we do.”