Yelena Protsenko was born in Kiev, Ukraine, which is part of the former Soviet Union. She has a younger sister, Valentina, whom she is very close to. As children they loved to play school and pretend to be teachers and students. Yelena loved to teach Valentina how to read and write so much that she started giving private lessons to her sister's friends. Everybody thought that Yelena will become a teacher, but after teaching the same thing to a few kids she became bored.
She was always involved in all of the school clubs, music, drawing, gymnastics, and attended ice skating school. One day she wanted to be a gymnast another day she wanted to be a scientist. Yelena wanted to do several different things at the same time; it was really hard to set her mind on one.
During her journey to self discovery she joined a youth theatre and got the lead role. After that experience she did not want to think about anything else. All of her passion had become directed towards her acting, where she was able to become all of the characters that she had played as a child. She had discovered the magic of being able to experience lives and points of view of people in a way few could.
Yelena 's journey next took her to the United States. Moving from a large city to Grand Rapids, Michigan was quite a shock for her and she relocated to Las Vegas, NV shortly thereafter. Yelena enrolled at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she majored in theatre.
After moving to Los Angeles, she was accepted into the New York Film Academy's acting for film program. Yelena was very fortunate to get the best teachers and to have her training at the Universal Studio's Lot. After completing the program she was recommended by one of her professors to continue her education with the Moscow Art Theatre and was accepted into their competitive program. This experience proved to be one of her favorites in her acting career because it had intense training, a great faculty and the fundamentals of all theatre: the Stanislavski system. She returned to Los Angeles, signed with an agent and started working.
Today, Yelena is a cast member of the Russian Comedy Club L.A. She is able to use her acting and Russian/English language skills to reach audiences of several countries.
Yelena is very passionate about the art of theater and feels that it's imperative that the next generation is exposed to the art as well. She has started her own company called Puppet Theater on Wheels . This original idea allows her to bring theater, imagination, magic and enrichment into the lives of children through timeless fairytales.
