How It Started...Jasmine Renée Thomas is from the great state of Texas- born and raised in Houston with her loving, supportive and faithful family (pictured)! Acting and singing in the community since childhood, she found her passion as a performer as a member of the Loading Dock Production Company at Lamar High School. After winning two Best Actress awards for the Zone and Area UIL competitions as well as a nomination for Best Featured Performer in the coveted Tommy Tunes Awards, Jasmine was convinced that performing would be her future.
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Jasmine continued to follow her passion and received her B.A. in Theatre Arts and Communication Studies from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. She even spent a summer studying ensemble-based physical theatre with the Rhodipi International Theatre Laboratory in Smolyan, Bulgaria after her sophomore year.
Following graduation, Jasmine began her professional acting career at Houston's Ensemble Theatre and became a corps member for Teach for America- Houston. As an ESL teacher, Jasmine balanced founding a newcomer academy for recent immigrants and refugees on her TFA campus with acting locally. Her favorite project during this time was the chance to perform in the first festival for Black playwrights, Fade to Black Festival- founded by the multi-talented Denise O'Neal. After two years of teaching English as a Second Language in Houston and acting on the side, in August 2014, Jasmine moved up to New York City to take the leap into acting full-time. While in the Big Apple, she completed over 30 projects! Her first televised gig was a lead role in a reenactment series- Animal Planet's Monsters Inside Me Season 5, Episode 8- and she has continued to be blessed with opportunity. In her time in New York, Jasmine took the bull by the horns and starred in off- Broadway musicals, festival performances, straight plays, commercials, short films, voice over work, private singing engagements and television earning the recognition as "hilarious," and "a powerhouse vocalist" by reviewers in NYC as well as her eligibility to join the Screen Actor's Guild. Now back in Houston, Jasmine continues to perform on stage, devise new works, and perform voice acting. When not performing, she holds classes for local non-profits including the Tony award winning Alley Theatre, Skeyez N' Starz, and the Urban Arts Academy. She currently shares her theatre arts integration gifts as a 4th grade English teacher and was awarded the 2020-2021 Elementary Teacher of the Year for a local district! Jasmine loves being able to mix her passions of education and theatre to better serve students in the Houston area while diving deeper into her art-form. |