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The front of the CLARA on the corner of 24th and N streets on April 6, 2026. The building that houses the CLARA was built in 1921 as Fremont Primary School. It transitioned to an adult school in 1980.Ruth Finch\/CapRadio<\/p>\nMegan Wygant first moved to Sacramento in 2016, and within 48 hours of her coming to town, moving truck in tow, she had an interview for a job as the executive director of the E. Claire Raley Studios for the Performing Arts, also known as the CLARA.<\/p>\n
She had initially started looking for a job in the area as she got out of business school. Her partner had a permanent position lined up in Sacramento, and she was moving with him.<\/p>\n
Wygant said that when she first applied, she mostly thought her position at the CLARA was going to be \u201ca gap job,\u201d and that it had to do with property management.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout a week later, I get an email thanking me for my application to be the executive director of the E. Claire Raley Studios for the Performing Arts and asking me to pick an interview slot,\u201d Wygant said. \u201cI had to take the very last interview slot they had because we were driving across the country and I wasn\u2019t arriving until that last day of interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n
She got the job. That was in 2016, and after 10 years of doing much more than just property management, Wygant is still heading up the CLARA.<\/p>\n
The building that houses the CLARA was built in 1921 as Fremont Primary School on the corner of 24th and N streets. It transitioned to an adult school in 1980, and then due to budgetary pressure, was closed in 2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When it closed, several neighbors were looking to find a home for performing arts groups in Sacramento, including the Sacramento Ballet. They\u2019ve been a driving force for the CLARA since its inception.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The front of the CLARA on the corner of 24th and N streets on April 6, 2026. The building that houses the CLARA was built in 1921 as Fremont Primary School. It transitioned to an adult school in 1980.Ruth Finch\/CapRadio<\/p>\n
Sara Slocum started out at the Sacramento Ballet working at the box office in the fall after the CLARA opened. Working out of an old building, she said in the early days, the elements sometimes got the better of the now 100+ year old building.<\/p>\n
\u201cA storm would come in and it\u2019d be raining inside almost,\u201d Slocum said. \u201cWe\u2019d have to put garbage cans wherever we found a leak.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten years later, Slocum\u2019s now the general manager at the Sacramento Ballet. Slocum said that Wygant was instrumental in getting the project off its feet, securing funding for renovations –\u00a0 and a new roof.<\/p>\n
According to Slocum, the CLARA has always been about collaboration, and a lot of times, that\u2019s small things, even lending a microwave when another organization housed at CLARA\u2019s went out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But sometimes, they\u2019ve been able to collaborate artistically as well. She recalls one collaboration with Capital Stage where they brought Hamlet into their ballet studio.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey brought a couple actors to our studio,\u201d Slocum said. \u201cWe invited some of our patrons and donors and they were able to do a scene from Hamlet, and then we would do the same scene with a ballet.\u201d<\/p>\n
At CLARA, you can also find rehearsal and education studios for the McKeever School of Irish Dance, Capital Stage, Sacramento Preparatory Music Academy and Southside Unlimited.<\/p>\n
Dakota Medina has been teaching at the CLARA for five years through Southside Unlimited, a Sacramento program for helping people with disabilities gain independence and become successful. He runs their music studio out of CLARA.<\/p>\n
Medina said that being with the CLARA helps Southside Unlimited\u2019s mission to integrate people with disabilities into the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe CLARA organization invites us all the time into group activities with the whole organization,\u201d Medina said. \u201cThey really curate a space where all of these organizations can collaborate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CLARA\u2019s own arts education programming includes teaching artist residencies<\/a>, Arts Up Front workshops<\/a> and their Performing Arts Summer Camp<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the course of running the CLARA for 10 years, Wygant said it\u2019s been a learning experience. She hadn\u2019t had a job as an executive director before, and trying to harbor a cohesive performance art community has its challenges. She had to learn how to set boundaries, how to navigate assumptions and most importantly, how to lead.<\/p>\n She said that a Ted Lasso quote really resonated with her.<\/p>\n \u201cBe curious, not judgemental,\u201d Wygant said. \u201cWe really try at CLARA to focus on the importance of curiosity both as a practice, as an artistic practice, but also as a leadership practice.\u201d<\/p>\n While she\u2019d been to Sacramento before, when moving to Sacramento and living in the city properly, she found a unique scene of artists in Sacramento. Wygant said she found a nexus of middle class performing artists here who have been able to live and work as professional artists as their primary profession.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re used to this vision of a starving artist who gets shipped in from New York, lives in actor housing for a couple of months and then bounces,\u201d Wygant said. \u201cOne of my favorite things to realize early on was that Sacramento invested enough in the arts that artists had living wages and were able to live a good life.\u201d<\/p>\n Wygant said that some of that has changed, housing prices have climbed, and Sacramento maybe isn\u2019t as affordable as it used to be. Moving forward, she wants to see the CLARA host more classes to help adult artists become teaching artists, and help them make a living from their art.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe big thing that we\u2019ve leaned on has always been about helping adult artists build the skills to be successful in a classroom setting,\u201d Wygant said. \u201cTeaching artists are actually in very short supply, and that is a path for stabilizing income for an artist in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n While the CLARA has focused a lot on art education for children, they also want to push into educating adults who aren\u2019t professional artists.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve sort of acknowledged that adults deserve time to play and create as well, and that starts with the parents at summer camp who, as they\u2019re picking up their kids, they’re like, \u2018Man, I wish there was like an adult summer camp,\u2019\u201d Wygant said. \u201cThen we\u2019re like, but why not? Why can\u2019t we play? Why can\u2019t we have fun?\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019ll be piloting four adult classes starting in May, including a clowning class.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHaving CLARA activated during the school, during the working day with arts programming is a really exciting vision for me,\u201d Wygant said. \u201cI love the idea of our halls being filled with adults, finding community, finding creative purpose, finding fun and joy because of our institution.\u201d<\/p>\n She said that a lot of people assume that CLARA is just a building, that they see names on doors and they assume that they know what\u2019s happening behind those doors.<\/p>\n \u201cI would really invite people to come explore, walk through the halls, have a coffee, drop in our office, ask me about the giraffe that\u2019s in our office because there\u2019s a story behind that,\u201d Wygant said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, just come talk to us about it. There\u2019s a lot here. There\u2019s more than you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Dancers pulled from the crowd take a bow after their performance at CLARA\u2019s 10th birthday party on Saturday, April 4th 2026.Ruth Finch\/CapRadio<\/p>\n
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