KUKFO first entered St. Petersburg's playbill in autumn of 2002. It started as a staging of the play called “Picnic” by Fernando Arrabale with the graduates of the St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy. The first performances were played on the experimental stage of the Litsedei. Theatre and in St. Petersburg's Actors' House. Upon leaving after the shows spectators used to ask where and when the play would be shown next. This gave rise to the idea that “Picnic” should not be given up as students' works usually are, but that instead it should be improved fitting the high level of professional theatre and made the first title in a new theatre's repertoire.

The newly born theatre was named Kukolny (Puppet) Format. It may be called an experiment in theatre management, as there is neither chief producer nor chief artist. It is a theatre of projects, its repertoire being made up of performances created by various co-operations of artists united by the puppet theatre format.

In autumn, 2003, in the Dostoevsky Museum of St. Petersburg, two new performances were shown. The first one was “Rider Cuprum”, designed and directed by Anna Victorova, a historical fantasia on the theme of “Copper Horseman” poem by Alexander Pushkin. The second one was “The Cat That…” after Rudyard Kipling, created by Victor Antonov. That was the beginning of KUKFO as a professional company.

In 2005, the Kukolny Format Theatre was a participant of the Golden Mask Festival in Moscow. The Golden Mask is an annual Russian national festival of performance arts. It remains a significant forum that serves the purpose of illuminating the current situation in Russian theatre. The festival presents the best drama, opera, ballet, operetta/musical, contemporary dance and puppetry productions. Golden Mask awards are conferred upon the festival’s best productions, directors, choreographers, conductors, stage designers and actors. In April 2005 the show "Rider Cuprum" by Kukolny Format Theatre was named "the best production” in the “Puppetry” nomination, and Anna Victorova, who made it, was awarded the main Golden Mask prize as the festival’s “best puppet theatre director”.

A new work currently being created by KUKFO is named "Robin the Bobbin". It is a performance for family viewing: parents will recollect verses which they once knew by heart, and children will hear them for the first time. These are the well-known Mother Goose Rhymes as well as verses by English and Russian poets: Edward Lear, Samuil Marshak, Henrich Sapgir, and others. The show’s artist and director is Anna Victorova, she also is the manufacturer of all dolls. The actors in this play are Irina Zimina and Peter Vasilyev.