Cast
Rusty Yunusoff
Rusty Yunusoff here! I’m a professional storyboard artist, illustrator, animator, and cartoonist, but most of all, I am a storyteller. I’ve worked on numerous animation and TV projects in Hollywood, including Golan the Insatiable (airing on FOX) and The Awesomes (streaming on Hulu). My animated short films have been submitted to festivals in Washington, D.C. (Best Animated Short), Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Munich, and Brussels.
I love working with Ramka Theater and, with the help of my fellow puppeteers, transforming the written word into a compelling story.
Irina Abramovich
I’m Irina. I spent more than thirty years working as an architect in the United States, and now I teach architecture at a Russian school. I love art in all its forms, but theater has always held a special place in my heart.
For a long time, I felt that our corner of the world was missing a little of theater’s magic. And then an idea came to me: why not create a theater of our own? An amateur theater, perhaps—but a puppet theater for adults, with life-size puppets that we would design and build ourselves.
From the very beginning, I knew I didn’t want to do it alone. I wanted to find people who would be just as obsessed with the idea as I was—people willing to dream it, build it, and bring it to life together.
And somehow, I found them. There are eight of us now. This shared idea brought us together, took hold of us, and still refuses to let go. So we work. We imagine. We build. We experiment. We keep going.
And really, what could be better than finding a group of people who believe in the same impossible little dream? I love them all.
Sergei Bedov
I’m Sergey. I traveled a great deal from an early age, and that sparked a lasting curiosity about how things work—people, cultures, spaces, and the world we create around us. I also grew up in a creative family, so art and the stage were always somewhere nearby.
That desire to understand how things are built eventually became my profession. I’m an engineer, and I enjoy exploring new technologies and the possibilities they can open for people.
Over time, that same curiosity also turned inward. It led me to the Inner Engineering program, which became the beginning of my interest in yoga and of a habit I now value deeply: observing what is happening within me.
What draws me most to this performance is the opportunity not only to live through a role, but also to observe it from the outside—to be fully inside the experience while, at the same time, noticing how it unfolds.
For me, this is something deeply personal. It is part of an ongoing search for truth.
My family—my wife and our two daughters—are my greatest teachers. With them, I learn every day about love, patience, and presence, and I deeply value the time we share together.
Natalia Yargomskaya
I’m Natalia. I’m a mom of two wonderful teenagers, a wife, and a psychologist.
I’ve always been drawn to different forms of art—film, drawing, singing, dancing, and, of course, theater. I love the world of images and metaphors, and the quiet, sometimes unexpected ways they shape how we see ourselves, other people, and life around us.
What fascinates me most about theater is its ability to hold many layers at once. A gesture, an image, a pause, a line of text—sometimes they can say much more than words alone. I love bringing those layers to the stage and turning something familiar about our lives into something we can suddenly see differently.
I’ve already had the chance to be an actress in adult theater and a director in children’s theater. And now I’ve found myself in a new and wonderfully unexpected place: a puppet theater for adults.
There is something magical about giving life to a puppet, letting an object begin to breathe, feel, and speak. Maybe that is why this project feels so special to me.
And the best part?
We’re having a really good time creating it.
Polina Bondarchuk
My name is Polina Bondarchuk. I’m an art teacher, and for most of my professional life I have worked with children in schools. I also have my own art studio, and my love of theater, costumes, and stage design has been with me since childhood—I grew up in a creative family.
I studied art history through the Hermitage Museum program, attended art school, and for twenty years supported my own children in their theater adventures. Along the way, I also found my own place on stage.
As an actress, I have played all kinds of characters: princesses, witches, and animals. I remember myself as a rooster, a drake, and even a pike.
In this theater, I play a Bird. It is my first role in which I don’t become the character myself, but instead bring it to life through a puppet.
The Bird puppet for our performance was created by the wonderful artists Irina Abramovich and Maria Peregudova. And especially for this production, I also created a papier-mâché puppet of my own—a golden fish.
For me, RAMKA brings together so many things I have loved throughout my life: art, theater, handmade objects, imagination, and the strange little magic that happens when something created by human hands suddenly begins to feel alive.
Maria Vitess
If you had told me a year ago that I would become part of a puppet theater company, I probably would have laughed. My family is still a little surprised. I teach mathematics, and I love photography as a way of exploring thoughts and emotions. I love literature for the conversations it opens—with ourselves and with the world around us. In general, I’m drawn to anything that makes us think, question, and change.
Growing up in St. Petersburg, theater was always part of my life. I remember performances that could turn me inside out in two hours, others that left me feeling as if I were floating above the ground, and some that stayed with me for years, quietly working their way through my thoughts.
One of my warmest theater memories is a puppet performance called The Magic Feather at the Demmeni Marionette Theater. I have carried that memory with me for decades.
This summer, I was rereading one of my favorite novels—I won’t say which one, just in case—and I suddenly began imagining it as a puppet show. I could see the characters, the stage, the movement, the whole world of it so clearly that I was genuinely surprised to discover that no one had ever staged it that way.
Then, one day, I opened Facebook and saw Irina’s post inviting people to come together and play with puppets—only this time, for grown-ups.
A sign? Maybe. There is a wonderful English word for moments like this: serendipity. That is exactly what it felt like. Konstantin Raikin once recalled something Leonid Utyosov had told him: “Remember, old man, youth comes with age.” That feels very much like RAMKA.
In our theater, I sew puppets, take photographs, work with the script, and I will even be stepping onto the stage myself—although for now, I can only say that in a whisper. What I hope most is that we create something alive.
Our characters’ story has changed as we have gone deeper into it, and somewhere along the way, we have changed too. I hope that for the length of the performance, the audience will step into this world with us—and come out of it just a little different.
Maybe a little happier.
Natalia Tulkoff
Hi everyone, I’m Natasha.
My profession and everyday work have very little to do with theater—which has never stopped theater from occasionally bursting into my life.
My first serious theatrical experience found me in second grade. A friend and I wrote and staged a tiny play for two. We did everything properly: a script—more spoken than written—a stage made of desks pushed together, scenery drawn in chalk on the classroom blackboard, costumes made from pajamas, a premiere, and an audience. I no longer remember how thunderous the applause was.
Let’s say it was very thunderous.
At university, I joined a student theater of comedy sketches and variety performances. We spent two wonderfully chaotic years performing, even traveled to a festival, and then life happened to everyone: families, children, classes, exams, and all sorts of things that had very little to do with theater.
During my first years in a new country, there was no room for theater at all—not to watch it, not to listen to it, and certainly not to take part in it. Although, if we remember Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” those years may have been the most theatrical of all—with their grotesque turns, tragedies, and comedies. Eventually, life became easier. And more fun.
Theater returned through the school my son attended. We put on performances quickly, energetically, and wholeheartedly. But even when the road ahead looks perfectly smooth, there is no guarantee you won’t suddenly fall into a pothole.
In 2023, I fell into one of the deepest ones of my life—and stayed there for almost two years. By the end of 2025, I finally began to feel that life was returning. And almost without slowing down, I jumped straight into RAMKA Theater.
RAMKA is a living workshop where a performance is built from nothing. It is fascinating to watch a story slowly emerge where, at first, there was only an idea. I’m very glad I jumped in. Together, we created the puppets, and the further we go, the more they begin to feel like different versions of ourselves.
Our theater is called RAMKA—“Frame.” Yes, there is an actual frame in our performance. But a frame is also much more than that. It is an entire universe of meanings. A frame separates. It focuses. It refracts. It defines. A step outside the frame offers a different view. A step inside can bring stillness and protection.
During our performance, you will see what we have gathered inside our frame. And then you will leave, carrying with you your own thoughts, impressions—and perhaps something else. RAMKA Theater will wave goodbye and say: “Until we meet again.” And maybe, as you walk away, you will suddenly turn back, smile, and whisper: “Until we meet again.”
Anna Shakirova
Theater has a funny habit of finding its way into my life. I step into it, wander away for a while, and then, whenever the opportunity appears, somehow find myself back again. And every time, it feels a little like coming home.
Ten years ago, my husband, our son, and I moved to the United States. I love the life we have built here, but for a long time I felt that one particular ingredient was missing—that slightly chaotic creative spark I had grown up with.
Back in Moscow, I went to the theater often. I saw Konstantin Raikin in King Lear, Spartak Mishulin in The Bourgeois Gentleman, and once found myself watching Igor Moiseyev from the audience as he observed his own ballet company perform. Those moments stayed with me. I think theater does that: you leave the building, but something from the performance quietly follows you home.
I hope RAMKA can bring a little of that magic to Southern California—more imagination, more color, more reasons to get together and create something slightly improbable.