Joe Parente is one of the founding fathers of Sacramento-area educational television. He began his career in this area nearly three decades ago in 1991, when he launched six hours of live-TV programming five days a week out of Studio E3 at San Juan High School.
The experiences and relationships developed through Joe’s work at Studio E3 launched him into his current role as Producer/Director of Process Theatre Inc., a nonprofit corporation. Process Theatre’s primary mission is to provide Media Arts-in-Education to diverse populations, including students with disabilities. Specifically, the organization provides instruction in theatre, dance, music, digital arts, digital media, multimedia and other art forms, and also provides technical assistance and advice to other organizations and public entities in the performing arts.
Joe serves as Process Theatre’s representative on the Board of the Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium (SECC). Process Theatre is the only nonprofit member/associate member of the SECC.
“The corporation has no voting rights, but as an associate member we can sit on the Board and offer input,” he says. “Although we are not an institution like the schools and universities, we have a unique role as a nonprofit corporation. We can work within schools and universities changing lives in schools, changing the ways schools are using digital media. We are also partnering with different schools, working with the educational tech groups in various schools through professional development and digital media.”
Joe had an early introduction to music and the performing arts while growing up in Scranton, Pa. He began playing the accordion when he was only six years old: “A special one had to be ordered for me because I was so small, but at six years old, I was playing in an all-accordion band.”
It was a few years later that he learned the value of being a good listener while a student at Scranton Prep, the Jesuit high school he attended. It was there that he studied Latin under a teacher named Carmen Gigliotti: “One thing Mr. Gigliotti used to say to us was, ‘When your mouth is in gear, your brain is in neutral.’ The deal was we were supposed to shut up and listen and not talk through everything he was talking about.”
Joe continued his Jesuit education at the University of Scranton, where he earned an undergraduate degree in Psychology, and then a master’s degree in Music Therapy from Loyola University New Orleans.
As Joe looks to the future, he sees the collaboration between SECC and Process Theatre growing stronger as an invaluable partnership improving educational TV in the Sacramento community:
“We would like to be part of that digital media flow that is being used in education, as we continue to work with diverse populations and with our students with disabilities. We’d like those students to get involved with all the cool new things that kids are doing in their schools.”
Want to contact Joe? Write to him at parente@processtheatre.org
