Ramon Abad

Ramon Abad (he/his) is a proud Filipino American puppeteer, artist, and teacher based in San Francisco. He began his puppetry practice in the mid 1990s where he performed a traveling solo puppet show at Bay Area Filipino American festivals. His puppet booth project Tito Ramon’s Pop-Up Puppet Show was the first puppet show performed at Kapwa Gardens post Covid-19. From 2021 to 2025, Ramon was a resident artist of Balay Kreative Studio, a collective of Filipino American artists based in SOMA Pilipinas in downtown San Francisco.

Ramon was a shadow puppeteer and puppet-maker with Larry Reed’s ShadowLight Productions and was in “Wayang Listrik” that toured in 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.

He has directed stage plays, online performances and immersive theater productions using modern puppetry: “Rosalyn Learns How to Misbehave” 2020 (CA Arts Council), “The Party” 2021 (San Francisco Arts Commission), “Pickles! The Bindlestiff Kid Show” 2023 (Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center), “Duck Soup” 2024 (Theatre Bay Area). Ramon is currently developing “The Big Whoop Dee Do” a multimedia family-friendly live theater show using large-scale puppets and video projection. (San Francisco Arts Commission and Gerbode Foundation).

As a Teaching Artist, Ramon has led puppetry arts residencies and workshops with the San Francisco Arts Education Project, San Francisco Opera, African American Shakespeare Co./Handful Players, California Academy of Sciences and the Children’s Creativity Museum. In his teaching practice, he seeks to engage all communities to explore modern puppetry inclusive of diverse ages and cultures.