“I copied his performance on the spot,” Fomitchev recalls. “My mother was so amazed she phoned the TV station and tracked down the mime and asked him to meet with me. He saw that I had raw talent and suggested that I take mime training.”

Today, the Vancouver, Canada-based performer, who goes by the nom de mime Max-i-mime, tours internationally in his own productions, as well as acting on television (The L Word) and in feature films (Saving Silverman).

His one-man, character-driven show, Rainman Returns, comes to Washington’s Gallaudet University Gil Eastman Studio today through Sunday as just one offering in the two-week QuestFest 2010, an international visual theater festival with performances and workshops throughout the D.C. and Baltimore region.

Though Fomitchev is deaf, he stated that even from an early age, while he’s faced challenges, he hasn’t missed much: Spoken “language becomes language of the body and expression,” he wrote in answer to a series of e-mailed questions.

Where he did struggle was in growing up as a Jew in the Soviet Union. “We did not have religion, but there was still a fear of being Jewish,” he recalled.

Fomitchev’s mother even chose to list her son’s nationality as Russian, not Jewish, on his identity card hoping to make life easier for him.

“Being surrounded by the anti-Semitic attitude was a huge part of growing up Russia, and it pained me deeply,” he said, “but as a teen, I would sometimes pretend to agree with the hateful, ignorant remarks made against Jewish people. This uneasy feeling seemed like it was always with me in Russia.”

Though his parents are hearing, both his grandparents were deaf, and Fomitchev grew up speaking Russian sign language and lip-reading. As a deaf youngster, he faced additional prejudice: “Being deaf, and signing in public was another target on my back, and I experienced a lot of bullying and ridicule