Television Roots and Southern California Spectacle
Matt Scott grew up in Los Angeles during the 1970s surrounded by an expansive landscape of puppet entertainment.
According to an interview with Voyage LA, the founder of the Los Angeles-based marionette troupe Rasputin’s Marionettes developed his lifelong fascination with puppetry through iconic television programs and legendary live performances in Southern California. He watched Sid and Marty Krofft’s Saturday morning programs with intense devotion, alongside weekly viewings of The Muppet Show every Monday night.
From Busch Gardens to the Bob Baker Apprenticeship
Television provided early inspiration, but live performances cemented Scott’s artistic path.
At Busch Gardens in Van Nuys, he watched marionette master Phillip Huber perform with figures crafted by Tony Urbano, a puppet legend and creator of early Krofft puppets. Witnessing this pageantry introduced Scott to the campiness and spectacle of live puppet shows. Visits to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater offered an even closer encounter, where puppets danced and sang inches from his face.
These formative experiences laid the groundwork for an enduring career in specialty performance and cabaret marionettes. Two decades after those childhood visits, Scott reconnected with the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in 1996 and became an apprentice to Bob Baker, a relationship that lasted for 15 years.
Building Rasputin’s Marionettes and Touring Europe
During his apprenticeship period, Scott traveled across Europe to study international puppet theaters. He learned new control bars, joints, and fabrication methods directly from European practitioners.
In 1999, he established Rasputin’s Marionettes. By the year 2000, Scott debuted his first production, Freakshow Follies, an homage to Todd Browning’s Freaks executed in the musical variety format of Bob Baker. The troupe has since built a new show almost every other year, specializing in cabaret-style performances where the operator remains in full view of the audience.
Pushing Past the Myth of a Dead Art Form
Despite decades of active production, Scott frequently encounters the double-edged compliment that he is keeping a dead art form alive.
In his interview with Voyage LA, he noted that numerous professional puppeteers are actively working, creating, and experimenting across various fields. Scott points out that while children’s and religious shows dominate a specific niche, cabaret, vaudeville, and burlesque offer expansive platforms for puppetry.
Mastering Trick Puppets for Adult Audiences
Because many of his gigs function as short variety acts, Scott has developed a specialty in trick puppets—including figures that juggle, play instruments, and perform stripteases—designed to engage audiences instantly and defy low artistic expectations.
Operating in full view requires Scott to balance his own stage presence with the mechanical focus of the puppet. Whether the character commands the stage or utilizes built-in specialty mechanisms, the puppet remains the focal point of every routine. By blending traditional craftsmanship learned from Bob Baker with international techniques gathered during his European travels, Scott continues to challenge perceptions of what marionettes can achieve on modern stages.
