{"id":206526,"date":"2018-11-19T12:33:11","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T17:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/?p=206526"},"modified":"2018-11-19T12:33:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T17:33:47","slug":"theatre-dance-alumni-on-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/2018\/11\/19\/theatre-dance-alumni-on-parade\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre and Dance Alumni On Parade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It takes a village \u2014 and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/academic-programs\/undergraduate\/bfa-production-and-design\/\">Montclair State Theatre Production and Design<\/a>\u00a0alumni \u2014 to produce the spectacular Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Parade.<\/p>\n<p>Since its modest beginnings in 1924, the parade has grown into a Thanksgiving tradition, this year featuring 16 giant balloons, 26 full-sized floats and 900 clowns. One hundred make-up artists and 150 dressers will be on hand Thanksgiving morning, with 4,000 Macy\u2019s employees and volunteers helping to keep things moving along.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re working year-round to make sure this parade happens on Thanksgiving morning,\u201d says Matt Kaprielian \u201913 in a Macy\u2019s promotional parade video. Kaprielian is among the production and design alumni working on this year\u2019s parade and currently manages operations in Macy\u2019s Parade Studio\u2019s Balloon Studio.<\/p>\n<p>At Montclair State, the practice-based curriculum in the Theatre and Dance Department\u2019s production and design concentration gives students opportunities to work in a range of performance venues and genres. \u201cThey leave us with knowledge gained from intensive coursework and experience grounded in multiple jobs on realized productions,\u201d says Professor Debra Otte. \u201cIt\u2019s a pre-professional program that effectively prepares undergraduates to work in theatre after graduation \u2014 and the proof is in our alumni.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those alumni include Brett Gearity \u201912, who has worked at the Macy\u2019s Parade Studio since 2000 in various capacities and has been its Production &amp; Events manager for the past seven years. His responsibilities include float production and construction of the parade\u2019s lavish floats.<\/p>\n<p>Kiefer Handschuh \u201918 focused on scenic fabrication, carpentry, design and technical direction as a student, skills that prepared him for his role as a Parade Studio carpenter, metalworker and automation technician.<\/p>\n<p>Freelance costume designer Jeffrey Colton Reid \u201917 \u2014 who is known professionally as Jeffrey Colton \u2014 and seamstress, costume technician and crafter Noele Rasco \u201915, contribute their talents to the costuming of the hundreds of people who take part in the parade. Christina Pfefferkorn \u201914, who won a national award for scenic design as a senior at Montclair State, and Jesse Haack \u201915, who is an Arts and Cultural Programming stage technician for College of the Arts Events Services, are also working on the production.<\/p>\n<p>For Kaprielian, his role with the parade is clearly a labor of love. As he says in the video, \u201cI\u2019m still amazed that this is actually where I\u2019m working now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2FAi69I\" target=\"_blank\">See some of these alumni in action.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From costumes to floats, Red Hawks work Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Parade<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":206527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206529,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206526\/revisions\/206529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/theatre-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}