Ramon Abad's Puppetry

Ramon Abad (he/his) is a proud Filipino American puppeteer, children’s theater director and teaching artist based in San Francisco, CA, acknowledged as unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land.

He began his puppetry practice in the mid 90s where he performed puppet shows at Filipino American festivals throughout the Bay Area. In 2021-2025, Ramon was a resident artist of Balay Kreative Studio, a collective of Filipino American artists based in SOMA Pilipinas, an area designated in downtown San Francisco as a Filipino American cultural district.

As a company member of Larry Reed’s ShadowLight Productions from 1995 to 2002, Ramon was a puppeteer and puppet-maker in over a dozen shows. He was a shadow puppeteer on Wayang Listrik that premiered in New York’s Public Theater and toured as part of the Jim Henson International Puppetry Festival 1997. As the resident puppeteer with the Filipino American sketch comedy troupe tongue in A mood, Ramon devised and directed skits using puppetry at Bindlestiff Studio from 1996-2001.

While residing in London, UK from 2002-2006, he was a puppeteer on shows for children’s theater companies Theatre-Rites, Polka Theatre, Dende Collective and the Puppet Theatre Barge. Ramon worked with the American musician Nona Hendryx on creating puppets for her original stage play The Brownstones 2005 at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London.

He has directed stage plays and immersive theater productions using puppetry: The Big Whoop Dee Do! 2026 (San Francisco Arts Commission and Theatre Bay Area), Duck Soup 2024 (Theatre Bay Area and Bindlestiff Studio), Pickles! The Bindlestiff Kid Show 2023 (Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center), The Party 2021 (San Francisco Arts Commission), Rosalyn Learns How to Misbehave 2020 (California Arts Council).

Ramon premiered his first solo art installation show Mabuhay, Friend! in Fall 2023 at the gallery of the San Francisco Arts Education Project inside the Minnesota Street Project. He designed a series of interactive sculptures as puppets that encouraged gallery visitors to touch, move and play with the kinetic artwork directly.

He has led puppetry arts residencies and workshops with the San Francisco Arts Education Project, American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), San Francisco Opera, African American Shakespeare Co., California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco Public Library and the Children’s Creativity Museum. As a teaching artist, Ramon seeks to engage communities to explore modern puppetry inclusive of diverse ages, cultures and abilities.