Members Bios

Samantha Chandler can remember her first time on stage at age eight. She sang "I Whistle a Happy Tune", from the King and I at the elementary school talent night. Ever since then, theater has played an important part in her life. As an adolescent it gave her the opportunity to work with adults as an equal. It is how she survived high school. It has helped her explore stories and characters both known and unknown to her.

She has been a middle school teacher for the past five years, and during that time her desire to expose more young people to theater grew into the dream of opening a "children's" theater in Olympia. She is thrilled to have found Jen Ryle as a partner in making this dream a reality. She is proud to be making Olympia Family Theater the place that kids will one day remember as the first place they saw live theater.

Samantha has studied performance at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Freehold Theatre Studio in Seattle, and with the amazing members of UMO. She has directed student plays at Washington Middle School, and has performed in a number of independent theater productions in Olympia in the past decade. Her favorites include The Transfused, Julius Caesar, and the Boomtown trilogy.

Jen arrived in Olympia in the year 2000, after a lifetime of performing and loving music, children's literature and theater. She studied music and drama in high school and her early college years in Seattle. Over the years, she has gained experience directing, acting, singing and supporting local performing arts groups.

During her first 6 years in Olympia, you would have found her busily volunteering at Lincoln Elementary as the choir director and creating performance opportunities for many different classes of children. Jen is indebted to Lincoln and grateful for the opportunities she had there to perform, direct, adapt children's stories into short plays, to make music and work with children. Lincoln provided a place for her to grow as a parent, an artist and a person.

Happily, Jen met Samantha in the spring of 2006 and they got right to work planning Olympia Family Theater. In their first year and a half OFT reached hundreds of local families who attended our shows and partnered with wonderful businesses in the community who have sponsored their efforts financially and continue to be supportive and encouraging of OFT's programs. During OFT's first 2 seasons Jen is proud to have directed "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", "The Giver" and "Rapunzel".

Jen completed her BA at The Evergreen State College in June of 2006. She focused her studies on expressive arts, business and education. She worked for three summers with Creative Theatre Experience (CTE). Jen has 3 daughters, 2 of whom attend Olympia High School. Her youngest is in the Alki alternative program at Reeves Middle School. In addition to her work with OFT, Jen currently teaches drama and music classes for the Olympia Regional Learning Academy (ORLA).

As OFT reaches out to more children and families in our community, Jen is excited to continue to offer a wonderful season of shows to watch, and also to expand OFT's programming in developing opportunities for education, enrichment and expression through creative drama classes and workshops for all ages. Jen is thrilled to be living her dream, watching OFT grow and flourish.