Iryna Yuvkhimenko

Iryna Yuvkhimenko was born on February 12, 1984, into a military family in Kyiv, Ukraine.

When she was six, her father gave her a copy of Pushkin’s Fairy Tales in Verse. She learned it by heart, and at seven she staged her first performance, The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs, for the residents of the military dormitory where her family lived. Growing up, she took courses in journalism, modeling, photography, and sewing, and performed with several amateur theater groups.

She later returned to theater and to dance. Rather than going back to ensemble performing, she trained as a choreographer and, at the same school, studied to become a director of large public celebrations. An internship at the Academic Puppet Theater at the end of her studies made her fall in love with its world of magic for good.

For many years she organized children’s parties and hosted weddings.

In 2009, she and a friend founded the Seagull Puppet Theater, which, like the Bremen Town Musicians, traveled from city to city performing in schools and kindergartens.

In 2011, the company took part in Moloko, a major Ukrainian theater festival, with its production Ordinary Ermey and received a “Discovery of the Year” nomination. That recognition opened the door to the wider theater world and established the company as an independent, emerging professional theater.

In 2016, she emigrated with her family to Chicago, Illinois; by then she was a mother of three.

In 2021, she founded SOVA Theater Studio, a theater of puppets and people, which opened with the production The Stork and the Scarecrow.

Her motto: “Don’t wait for miracles. Create wonder yourself, and become a miracle for someone.”