A fluke of scheduling opened the door to a new passion and a career for Jared LeClaire, a student at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton.
“I never had any intention of studying theater, but when I enrolled they sent me a schedule with a theater class on it,” said LeClaire, 23 . “I was so upset, I thought about dropping it. But I went to class and really liked the instructor, who was a scene designer.”
The course mandated that students attend several plays, so LeClaire took in a production of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
“I had hardly ever been in a theater before, but I went because it was required,” he said. “I liked it. By the second play, I was hooked.”
What captivated LeClaire most wasn’t the acting, but what went on behind the scenes.
“I didn’t want to be on the stage; I loved the backstage stuff — the lighting, the sound,” he said. “My first semester, I was an assistant designer and I think I’ve designed at least one show per semester. It’s tough to find that kind of experience in an undergrad program, but I was lucky. I also got into digital media and projections that have become my speciality.”
As a theater major, LeClaire has become so adept at staging multimedia productions that work he displayed at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival caught the eye of representatives from the Stagecraft Institute in Las Vegas, who offered him a scholarship to attend their summer program. In 2011, LeClaire spent part of the summer in Nevada, working with industry professionals from Walt Disney Imagineering, Cirque du Soleil and other entertainment companies.
“I was blown away,” he said. “I always wanted to work for Cirque and had the chance to do a small show with them. As a result, I also have an interview coming up to do an internship with them.”
West Georgia University recently named LeClaire the winner of the Gordon Watson Award for Theater, given to a junior or senior theater major with an outstanding GPA and dedication to the school’s theater company.
“He is a gifted designer, exceptional student and simply a really nice guy,” said Pauline Gagnon, chair of UWG’s theater department. “He is humble yet assertive, quiet yet responsive. I have worked with him on many shows now in a variety of roles, and I say without hesitation (that) he is one of the best student designers I have ever had the pleasure of working with.”
In March, LeClaire attended the United States Institute for Theatre Technology’s annual conference in Wisconsin, where he won 2013 W. Oren Parker Undergraduate Scene Design Award . The distinction came with a $1,000 check.
“I had to submit a huge package of paperwork and images for three different university productions I worked on,” LeClaire said. “Winning brings a lot of attention to your career, and in the theater business it’s all about who you know. So getting that attention was really valuable.”
Now in his final semester at West Georgia, LeClaire recently designed and built puppets for a production of the musical “Avenue Q,” an adult spoof of “Sesame Street” that pairs live actors with oversized, hand-held puppets.
“I’ve never done anything like this,” he said. “It’s been very hard to create an original design for something like this when the originals are so iconic. I had to come up with an original look for each one.”
LeClaire’s next step is to enroll in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Texas at Austin. It’s a far cry from five years ago, when he tinkered with the idea of studying criminal justice.
“If you told me then that I’d be winning a national award for theater design, I’d have laughed,” he said. “The use of digital media in theater is going crazy right now, so it’s an exciting time. I can see myself after grad school doing concerts, television — anything. This is not where I ever expected to be, but I’ve really found a spot I love.”
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