Jennifer Rockwood (Director) Jennifer Rockwood is the director of The University of Toledo’s First Year Experience Program in the UT Learning Collaborative. This program oversees initiatives to help first year students make the transition to college academically and socially both in and outside the classroom. Jennifer oversees the new Beginning the Academic Journey classes across 6 colleges with 170 sections each fall. She has done numerous papers and presentations on millennial student engagement and first-year students at national conferences. She also films a monthly video newsletter to students and families of current students . She also maintains a social networking site for new students and writes a blog on the First Year of College.

A UT master mentor, she taught theatre in the Department of Theater and Film for more than 20 years. She has directed over 22 plays both on campus, at The Village Players and The Toledo Repertoire Theatre. She also produces and directs plays for commercial and corporate use.

She is a recipient of grants from both the Ohio Arts Council and The Arts Commission of Greater Toledo for film production. Jennifer has worked and taught for both the Governors Gifted Summer Honors Institute, The Young Artist at Work Program, Arts Unlimited and The Lourdes College Summer Theatre Camp. Whew.

As a media consultant she has worked with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, television anchors, as well as political candidates. She also freelances in casting, directing and location scouting for video production companies. A professional actor she has appeared in local as well as national television commercials. She has 2 young sons 25 and 27 and a big black dog and her fabulous and equally talented husband plays in a band and takes pictures. She directed True West here so many years ago she can’t remember.

Kate Abu-Absi (Angela) is so happy to be back on the Village Player’s stage. Murder Among Friends has been a wonderful experience through out, but the best part has been once again working with two of my favorite Jennifer’s. Ladies, it’s been too long...

In truth, Jennifer has an extensive résumé which includes a children’s tour of Beauty and the Beast, wherein the company covered 46 states in 6 months, received an ‘endangering wildlife’ ticket for speeding in Montana, and lost 50% of their costumes, set, and personal effects off the back of the truck in Arkansas.

She and her (brilliant, handsome, charming, and humble) husband spent the first two years of their life together performing at a dinner theater in Florida for audiences half in the bag and mostly dead. There Jennifer danced ‘Louise’ 48 times in Carousel, forgot the lyrics to her only song in Man of La Mancha, and took an additional 48 inexplicable turns as the first Hungarian Puerto Rican amidst a chorus of equally pasty mid-western ‘Shark’ girls subsisting on jello salad and one free drink a night.

Her most memorable credits include summer productions as Martha Jefferson in 1776, and Mary Magdelene in Jesus Christ Superstar (which are really the same role, if you think about it). Local credits include Fiona in Brigadoon, and Vera in Ten little Indians at the Croswell Opera House. Neither one of them - as it turns out - were operas. She also played Bianca in some play by Shakespeare at the University of Toledo, and the chick with that really fast song in A Little Night Music.

Believe it or not, Jennifer’s insatiable talent for mischief took her away from the glamour of the road for the suburban housewife and working mother deal. She is ‘Mommy’ to an equally dramatic and beautiful daughter, and spends her waning twilight years masquerading as a successful independent insurance agent. Her return to the Toledo stage should be blamed on her enduring university friendships with Kate Abu-Absi and Jennifer Rockwood. Jennifer is quite seriously thrilled to be among such accomplished ladies again; all fiercely talented and passionate, a little wiser - and above all - much older than they were twenty years ago.