Theater outside the box

The audience has arrived, but there’s a crisis: The puppet stars of “The Crayon Court” children’s show at the Miles Memorial Playhouse have been so busy rehearsing for the show that they haven’t had time to make the sets, explains their resident artist, Monsieur Beaux Arts.

So, he has a favor to ask: Would all the kids and grown-ups lend a hand so that the show can go on?

Soon, audience members young and old are dipping into buckets of crayons and drawing trees, suns, flowers and anything else they fancy onto long, white flats on the floor in front of the stage.

The music cues up, Monsieur Beaux Arts -- a.k.a. the show’s creator, Thom Fountain, lead puppeteer for “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” -- greets late arrivals, and Miss Red, Miss Blue and other larger-than-life crayon characters make their entrances in a sweet-spirited, pop-style puppet celebration of color, art and music with the audience-drawn scenery on display.

“Kids are so used to sitting in front of the TV,” Fountain said. “I want them to feel a part of the production, that they have contributed artistically to what they are watching, and that they have the creativity in them as well.”

During the show, the big, soft-body puppets, from Indigo the Jester and King Royal Purple to a rainbow-robed Professor Spectrum, are deftly manipulated by black-clad professional puppeteers.

They take the audience through a Bob Fosse-style lesson in “Colornometry” that features hands in satiny gloves of all colors.

In a crowd-pleaser of a blacklight number, fish cavort in an undersea vignette; a “Dinosaur Stomp” interlude, led by dancing dinosaur skeletons, keeps children actively involved, allowing them to stand up, stretch and stomp their feet along with the music.

After the show, the lights come up and Fountain and his ensemble reveal a few trade secrets to show what’s behind the puppet magic, from the dancing Tyrannosaurus rex’s bony components that are worked with separate strings to how a piece of ripply fabric can become a puppet too, creating the illusion of calm and stormy seas.

Fountain finishes up his celebration of creativity by showing how crossed hands can become wings, and the theater is soon filled with fluttering butterflies.

The sprightly show, a labor of love for Fountain, whose feature film credits include both “Men in Black” movies, was financed with his own money.

“I guess you could say Salem funded the show,” he said, referring to Sabrina’s clever black cat.

Fountain is working with the head of “Sabrina’s” production company, Hartbreak Films’ Paula Hart, to develop the show as a TV series.

He is also planning to bring the live show and others now “on the drawing board” to other local venues next year.

A strong admirer of L.A.’s still operating, historic Bob Baker Marionette Theatre, where he first rehearsed “Crayon Court,” Fountain hopes to spark enthusiasm among audiences of all ages for puppet theater in general.

“I grew up going to puppet theater in Atlanta,” Fountain said. “I remember sitting in the theater when I was 8 years old and all of a sudden my life changed because it was a place of magic. “I want to give audiences that sense of magic.”

He also hopes to provide added opportunities for live stage experience to puppeteers like Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry President Christine Papalexis, who is among several guild members he hired for his show.

A film puppeteer with a raft of credits, Papalexis found her passion for puppetry when she went to work at the Bob Baker theater “20 years ago after college ‘cause I didn’t know what to do next with my life.”

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‘The Crayon Court’

Where: Miles Memorial Playhouse, Christine Emerson Reed Park,

1130 Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica

When: Saturday at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.; Sunday at 1 p.m.

Price: $8

Running time: 50 minutes

Info: (818) 842-0308.