Snow Adeera was living a conventional life working in the corporate world. But come spring of 2024, a creeping dissatisfaction was taking over. Unfulfilled at work, Adeera began exploring her artistic side by auditioning for shows at local theaters and eventually booking a role in Garden Theater’s production of Assassins.
A great win, but one that exposed some blank pages.
“When I was auditioning for various companies, I knew there was such a foundational gap between me and everyone else,” says Adeera. “Everyone had BFAs or they’d grown up acting and I knew I would need help at some point. But now with this show, I had a big scene with a kiss and an Eastern European dialect and I was really out of my depth. So that’s when I was like, Okay, it’s time.”
Time to hire a professional acting coach – specifically for Adeera, hire Patricia Duran.
If you’re a theater lover in Houston, Duran is someone you’ve seen and no doubt been amazed by. She’s tackled countless roles at the Alley, Stages, Mainstreet, 4th Wall, Catastrophic, Mildred’s Umbrella, Classical Theater and has been nominated and awarded by this publication many times for her immense talent.
And for the last two years she’s also been running her own acting studio – simply named The Studio with Patricia Duran – working with over 200 students to date.
So what exactly does it mean to work with an acting coach and who in the industry seeks out this kind of guidance?
First, a little background on Duran. In addition to her 20-something years as a professional actor, she also taught Drama in high school for a decade.
“When I left teaching at the middle school, I offered a teen master class,” says Duran. “I loved working with young adults, and I thought, let’s just start there because I’ve already got families I know.” Duran offered a week-long teen summer master class and it quickly filled up. “But then, I would talk to actors all the time, and people would say I wish you would do an adult class…. So I thought, well, let me see what happens if I offer a scene study class. And boom, I mean, it just took off in my adult classes now; they too fill up very quickly.”
Veteran award-winning actor, Deborah Hope is not only a believer in the need for a coach, but a believer in Duran’s ability to do the job.
“No matter how good you are, no matter if you’re starting out or a seasoned actor, you will always need a coach,” says Hope. “I’d known Patricia for a really long time, and I love her work, so she was my first choice when I knew I needed help prepping for an audition.”
Hope had a monologue she wanted to perform for Stages’ general auditions—one she’d tackled many times before in her career but felt needed a fresh take.
“Patricia asks questions; she sees what she’s working with, and then she’ll say, okay, on this passage, how did you get that, what do you feel the character is thinking there? She drills down to the basics. And I would say probably four or five times in the hour and a half that I worked with her, I felt, Oh my God, I never even thought of that! She breaks down the whole character and the text and you start from zero. And then build it up and it gives you a different way of approaching it, which is so exciting for an actor.”
Exciting and successful too. Bumping into Stages Artistic Director, Derek Livingston a couple years later, Hope recounts him saying he remembered and was impressed by her audition—a welcome confirmation of the work she had done with Duran.
Working with professional actors doesn’t mean Duran doesn’t have time for her student artists as well. Many of whom stuck with her after she left teaching them in middle school.
When Mackenzie Manning told her mother Michelle Manning that she wanted to be an HSPVA student, they knew they needed to get serious about it. “We needed somebody who was poised and genuine enough to see Mackenzie’s talents, get behind her and help her in every way, says her mom. “Ms. Duran actually left our school after that 6th grade year but I made that connection with her. She was the kindest person I’d ever met and it was important that the people behind the scenes prepping Mackenzie for her auditions be skilled in their craft, genuine and provide a safe space for her to grow and learn, not only as an actress, but as just a young lady in general.”
Duran began working with Mackenzie to get her prepared for the school audition both in group and private lessons. “Every Saturday we’d focus on certain things like my song, where am I going look, how am I going to act it out, do I look at the camera, do I have enough space to move around, how loud do I have to sing for it to pick up on me?” says Mackenzie.
Duran also taught group scene and tableaux exercises, and most importantly, says Mackenzie, Duran helped her feel natural and just be herself, which is what the school wanted to see.
All her peers from class were accepted into HSPVA due in large part, Mackenzie feels, to Duran’s coaching. “I felt like if I hadn’t gone to the classes I would have gone into the audition scared and frightened because I didn’t know what they were going to throw at me,” she says. “It helped me go into the audition more opened up, more confident in myself, because I knew they may throw this stuff at you. And even though sometimes they didn’t throw exactly what she said they were going to do, I still knew how to go through the situation.”
Each actor’s growth and success feels meaningful to Duran, but she mentions Adeera and their work to take her from the corporate world into a successful career onstage as one of her most fulfilling.
“Snow came to me over a year ago and just needed help. She hadn’t done a stage production and now had a swing role at the Garden Theater, which we worked on.”
“Patricia was open, warm, safe, and nonjudgmental,” says Adeera. “I was feeling extremely insecure and so she met me where I was at and she taught me the basics of acting in terms of movement and warm ups …. and then we started working the scene, and that that was the 1st lesson but by the end of it, I felt like, okay, I trust this person, and I felt so much more confident about the scene already.”
Duran continued to help her with audition prep following that show. Previously, Adeera had auditioned for Alliance auditions and felt like she had bombed the experience. She and Duran worked together for months and the results were so successful, even artistic directors took notice.
“I’ve seen Snow grow so much in just a few years,” says Classical Theatre Artistic Director, John Johnston. “I remember her first audition at our open generals, and thinking that she was inexperienced and a little green, but still with excellent potential…. Then when we went to go audition for our Shakespeare Outreach touring production of Romeo & Juliet, I called her in. She did a great job with her video audition and subsequent callback. She was then cast as our all-important female swing for that show. I was impressed with the strides she’d made in what was a pretty short amount of time.”
Johnston says the biggest issue with casting inexperienced actors is that a tight rehearsal schedule doesn’t leave room for actor coaching. “This is where acting classes like those at Patricia’s studio are so vital,” says Johnston. “She was able to take a raw talent like Snow’s and help her hone it. Basically, doing some of my work for me. So that when I want to go cast an actor, they’re prepared for what’s going to be expected of them – whether it’s in the audition room, rehearsal studio, or onstage.”
The following year, Adeera auditioned for Classical’s production of Othello, working with Duran to finesse her skills. “It was one of the auditions that Duran helped me with from beginning to end of that whole process. And then I ended up booking the role of Bianca and that was a huge milestone for me because it was the first professional show I ever booked and my first principal role.”
Thinking about all her students’ success brings tears to Duran’s eyes. “My job is to listen to people and where they’re at in their careers, encourage, walk with and guide them to do their best work. And when I see actors taking flight, it’s so moving to me. I’ve seen people grow and stretch in class and do things that they maybe never have had the opportunity to do on stage, and I’m like, wow, I just saw this completely different side to this person and I’m so hoping they get to do it outside my studio as well. It’s inspiring and it teaches me so much about myself and the craft.”
To learn more about Duran’s coaching, you can visit her website at PatriciaDuran.net/studio.
