TDPS's Jared Mezzocchi Honored With Princess Grace Award

The UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) is pleased to announce that visiting professor Jared Mezzocchi has been honored with the Princess Grace Award this fall for his work in the emerging field of on-stage projection design. Awarded by the International Princess Grace Foundation, Mezzocchi offered the Foundation their first real connection with projection design, a huge step for the art form.

I want my students to be better than me at this — that’s what will make the art form grow.

Mezzocchi’s design work uses projected images, light and movement to create another performer on-stage, helping tell the play’s story. He joins all of performance’s rehearsals and works with the live actors, helping them interact naturally with the projection, which involves as many as three green screens and ten live cameras and nine projectors.

Here at UMD, Mezzocchi’s new role in TDPS is to design a curriculum for digital projection, which he considers to be another on-stage voice to tell the story. TDPS will be one of the first programs in the U.S. to offer this pioneering program, along with Yale, Carnegie Mellon and NYU.

Modest about the prestigious Princess Grace Award, Mezzocchi is pleased the win will help build awareness of projection design, saying, “I want my students to be better than me at this — that’s what will make the art form grow.”

The International Princess Grace Foundation works closely with the artistic community to recognize new theatre and dance talents with the Princess Grace Award, providing financial assistance and moral encouragement so emerging artists can focus on artistic excellence.

Congratulations, Jared!