Meet the Blondes

Jenifer Rifenbery (Blonde - female cast)  Jenifer was actually born and lived in Santa Ana, which is right next to Tustin, California, however, she lived in over 12 locations before she graduated high school, including California, Japan, New Jersey, Washington, Costa Rica and Spain since her father was military. Her parents were both active in community theatre and she fell in love with acting at an early age.

Although she would have liked to do theatre professionally, in real life she studied medicine, and currently takes care of students’ health needs at University of Puget Sound. Ironically, she is probably one of the few actors who actually performs surgical procedures, so she pretty much knows how to cut an ear off, although she hasn’t ever actually had to do it. She fairly frequently removes toenails and has sewn up a kid’s tongue in the ER.

Her husband cuts people up for a living and actually repaired hernias on two cast-mates during rehearsals for “The Rocky Horror Show.” No Reservoir Dogs castmates volunteered to have her husband cut them up though. She has three sons in college, as well as two dogs, a cat and apparently some rats in the walls.

Last year she was seen as Sister Leo in “Nunsense” at WWCA, as one of the Gemini Courtesans in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” at Lakewood Playhouse, a confusing ex-wife in “Summerplay” One-Acts in Bremerton, Blanche in “Nightwatch” at Tacoma Little Theatre, and Music-Directed “A Rented Christmas” at Trinity Lutheran Church. Favorite roles include “Nurse Ratched” in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at Lakewood, “Denise” in “The Baker’s Wife”, “Juliet” and “Lady Capulet” in different productions (obviously) of “Romeo and Juliet”, and “Vi Petty” in “The Buddy Holly Story”. She also enjoys playing keyboards and has music-directed and accompanied many shows.

AND her best friend is Samantha Camp!

Michael Christopher (Mr. Blonde - male cast)  Born long ago, but not too far away, Michael Christopher is happy to be returning to the stage with TAO.

After a long break, it took Reservoir Dogs to get him back on the boards.
Michael's theater experience did not start until College. It was a production of "The Fantasticks" and he was the lightboard operator. And then someone figured out he could build too. So he started designing and building sets.And designing lights. And then running them too.
Finally he decided that being on stage might be worth trying too, so he auditioned for a production of "The Tempest."
It was all downhill from there.
Since that time, Michael has worked with most of the theater companies in Olympia in one capacity or another.
After spending a few years as Vice President of Olympia Little Theater, Michael was a founding member of The Vestpocket Traveling Theater.
After learning how to produce shows, Michael got together with a few good friends and founded Theater Artists Olympia with two goals in mind:
to produce the types of shows he wanted to see and to work with the people he enjoyed spending so many hours with.
So far it seems to be working.