Megan 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.
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.
Wygant said that when she first applied, she mostly thought her position at the CLARA was going to be “a gap job,” and that it had to do with property management.
“About 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,” Wygant said. “I had to take the very last interview slot they had because we were driving across the country and I wasn’t arriving until that last day of interviews.”
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.
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.
When it closed, several neighbors were looking to find a home for performing arts groups in Sacramento, including the Sacramento Ballet. They’ve been a driving force for the CLARA since its inception.
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
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.
“A storm would come in and it’d be raining inside almost,” Slocum said. “We’d have to put garbage cans wherever we found a leak.”
Ten years later, Slocum’s 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 - and a new roof.
According to Slocum, the CLARA has always been about collaboration, and a lot of times, that’s small things, even lending a microwave when another organization housed at CLARA’s went out.
But sometimes, they’ve been able to collaborate artistically as well. She recalls one collaboration with Capital Stage where they brought Hamlet into their ballet studio.
“They brought a couple actors to our studio,” Slocum said. “We 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.”
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.
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.
Medina said that being with the CLARA helps Southside Unlimited’s mission to integrate people with disabilities into the community.
“The CLARA organization invites us all the time into group activities with the whole organization,” Medina said. “They really curate a space where all of these organizations can collaborate.”
The CLARA’s own arts education programming includes teaching artist residencies, Arts Up Front workshops and their Performing Arts Summer Camp.
In the course of running the CLARA for 10 years, Wygant said it’s been a learning experience. She hadn’t 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.
She said that a Ted Lasso quote really resonated with her.
“Be curious, not judgemental,” Wygant said. “We 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.”
While she’d 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.
“You’re 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,” Wygant said. “One 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.”
Wygant said that some of that has changed, housing prices have climbed, and Sacramento maybe isn’t 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.
“The big thing that we’ve leaned on has always been about helping adult artists build the skills to be successful in a classroom setting,” Wygant said. “Teaching artists are actually in very short supply, and that is a path for stabilizing income for an artist in our community.”
Dancers pulled from the crowd take a bow after their performance at CLARA’s 10th birthday party on Saturday, April 4th 2026.Ruth Finch/CapRadio
While the CLARA has focused a lot on art education for children, they also want to push into educating adults who aren’t professional artists.
“We’ve 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’re picking up their kids, they're like, ‘Man, I wish there was like an adult summer camp,’” Wygant said. “Then we’re like, but why not? Why can’t we play? Why can’t we have fun?”
They’ll be piloting four adult classes starting in May, including a clowning class.
“Having CLARA activated during the school, during the working day with arts programming is a really exciting vision for me,” Wygant said. “I love the idea of our halls being filled with adults, finding community, finding creative purpose, finding fun and joy because of our institution.”
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’s happening behind those doors.
“I would really invite people to come explore, walk through the halls, have a coffee, drop in our office, ask me about the giraffe that’s in our office because there’s a story behind that,” Wygant said. “It’s like, just come talk to us about it. There’s a lot here. There’s more than you know.”
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