Barbara de Rijke

 (born November 15, 1977) is an American actress & dancer. She is known for being the costume performer for Sagwa Miao of Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat in multiple live tours & appearances.

Biography
Barbara was born in and raised in. She is of Dutch and White South African/Afrikaner heritage. She attended and later graduated from  in 2001 at the age of 23. After briefly working in at, in December 2002 she was hired by VEE Corporation. She was considering traveling with Sesame Street Live given her experience, but she then got an offer to perform Sagwa Miao, the titular character of Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat, for the "visuals" of a Carwardine Parks live show. VEE sent her to to film the video, where she "became connected to Sagwa". Soon, she had began performing Sagwa in promotional appearances under VEE, and then finally Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat Live! for the 2003-04 VEE touring season.

In 2007, she left VEE Corporation for Renald-Zanni Entertainment, wherein she performed Beauty Stem in A Toad Patrol Mystery! on the East Coast. In 2011, she returned to the role of Sagwa after Renald-Zanni acquired the Sagwa license from VEE. In 2014, she reunited with Alice-May Vagen (performer of Dongwa) when she joined Renald-Zanni's troupe, allowing Vagen to return to the role of Dongwa. Tom Pollmacher and Jojo Brookes (two of the performers of Sheegwa) joined Renald-Zanni in 2015. Barbara says that she considers her, Alice-May and Tom to be "an inseparable trio".

Currently, she continues touring as Sagwa in addition to working as a trainer/talent coach for new talent (both costumed character performers & human performers) in Renald-Zanni's productions.