“I call him a G marionette,” creator and puppeteering veteran Cain Carias tells me of El Triste, the character he brands as “the saddest puppet in Los Angeles.” It’s November, and we’re smoking a bowl a block away from the Bob Baker Marionette Theater before the last nighttime show at the theater prior to its imminent, gentrification-induced closure after over 50 years. Carias is El Triste’s “manipulator,” as he puts it, a 17-year veteran of the theater, and a force of nature in the city’s puppeteering scene.
“Either we wear ‘masks’ or are puppets of our minds. Same thing. It’s all made up,” says one introspective Instagram caption from a local photographer, accompanied by a photo of El Triste peering sadly from the drivers’ seat window of a tricked-out sedan. His online persona is rooted in deep depression (his name translates to “the sad,” after all), but filtered through what everyone does on social media: pretending to be fine and posting through the agony. Triste’s pictures, taken by local photographers and shared on his Instagram page, capture the full range of the gangster marionette lifestyle, from drinking Modelos to posing in to-scale low riders.
Carias is the exact opposite of his alter ego in demeanor. “I’m always stoned, I’m always happy, so I wanted to create something that I’m not,” he laughs, radiating enthusiasm for El Triste and Bob Baker’s legendary Los Angeles theater. A longtime resident of the area and of the theater, Carias has mostly managed to avoid the El Triste school of thought about the theater’s brick and mortar closure.
Still, there are notes of Carias within El Triste that extend beyond their many always-matching outfits. He’s not the depressed G of his marionette projects, but El Triste is a satirical reflection of his neighborhood and difficult early years in the U.S. after immigrating from Tijuana, Mexico, with his family as a young adolescent.
