Not long ago, Hollywood’s beloved Bob Baker Marionette Theater was hanging on by a thread. In the final decades of its eponymous founder’s life — he died in 2014, at the age of 90 — the puppetry organization was in perpetual dire financial straits, its longtime downtown L.A. playhouse in decay, particularly as the rise of CGI sapped its workshop’s film and TV gigs. Yet recent years have seen the revival of BBMT, known for cabaret-style shows whose whimsical bygone aesthetic is drawn from vaudeville and carnival midways. Today a non-profit, the theater has been string-pulling its way back into the Zeitgeist, its puppeteers performing to a massive crowd at Coachella this spring, its merch adorning Rachel Sennott’s talent manager on HBO’s I Love L.A. Now, for its next act, BBMT is attempting to purchase the historic Highland Park stage it took over in 2019 and mounting the company’s first original show in more than four decades. “It’s a rare heart-warming story in the time we live in right now, this little glimmer of hope,” …