The film and television set designer spent a day with theatre students talking about live events, careers and how a hunch can change a life.
Lucas Ingram '13 has helped design sets for the Tony Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards and the Super Bowl halftime show. He recently returned to the place where he first discovered he could build a career doing that kind of work.
Ingram is a freelance art director based in New York City. He works in both scripted television and film and live and corporate events. His television credits include The Equalizer and Katy Keene, among others. His film work will soon be seen in The Sidekick and New England Toys.
In the live-events space, Ingram has worked on four Super Bowl halftime shows, six CMA Country Christmas specials, four Tony Awards ceremonies, the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards and Good Morning America.
He has worked in three Emmy-nominated art departments and has won two Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on Good Morning America's 2016 Halloween and Christmas specials. His work was also nominated for an Art Directors Guild Award for the LIV Super Bowl halftime show.
Ingram spent a day on campus recently visiting theatre classes. He started the morning with a short question-and-answer session with students in a lighting design class. He then gave a longer presentation to three more classes about his work in live events, explaining what goes into producing a major live event.
“It was great meeting with students and talking about my individual work on those projects and explaining what the live event industry is to them because students don't necessarily know what all the backstory is and all the roles that go into making those events,” Ingram said.
Ingram came to Lehigh to study civil engineering, following three other members of his family into the field. His college application essay, ironically, was about his love of theater. That interest traced back to a Broadway magic show his parents took him to when he was 8 years old, when he was called onstage to help with a trick.
“I'm standing on stage and the trick is levitating a ball up a ramp,” he recalled. “I watched and saw a guy pulling a string off stage out of the corner of my eye and I was like, "That's really cool. That's how magic actually works. I want to do that."
Ingram found the magic of Lehigh’s theatre program pulled at him and he changed majors. He said, the breadth of the university made changing courses easy.
“For some reason I was saying that I want to be a civil engineer, but my college admission essay was about my love of theater. Fortunately, I changed majors quickly because Lehigh has such a broad program and it is such a robust school. With theatre, I found what I actually loved,” he said..
Ingram was one of roughly a dozen theatre majors and one of only a few design majors during his time on campus. He credits the program's size with giving him unusual access to faculty.
He was one of two students in Professor Melpomene Katakalos' first scenic design class at Lehigh, and he studied lighting under the late Professor Jeffrey Millet.
“The personal attention at Lehigh is fantastic,” he said. “I felt like I got that individual attention.”
Katakalos also took students on a summer internship at the Bay Area Playwright Festival, part of the SF Playwrights Foundation. The experience introduced Ingram to new-play development and eventually led him to the MFA program at the University of Iowa.
“We're so happy to welcome Lucas back, Katakalos said. “I am not at all surprised by his success. He's wildly creative, endlessly energetic, and just a really kind and generous collaborator. Those are the qualities you need to build a sustained career in the arts."
Ingram said his career began with a lucky email. While he was in graduate school, Ricky Kirschner ‘82 offered him a one-day internship working on the Tony Awards. His flight was delayed 19 hours, and he missed the day, but he was invited back anyway. He arrived straight from the airport with his luggage, and the art department asked if he knew Photoshop. He did, and he was put to work immediately.
“That one-day internship turned into 10 years of career so far, off one lucky email, one lucky conversation,” he said.
Since then, he has built his career largely through word of mouth. During his first year, he worked on 16 shows in six states. He found each new job by asking the people around him, partway through the current one, whether they needed anyone.
“It was just putting myself out there each time and making the personal appeal and connection,” he said.
Today, Ingram designs scenery for film and television. On the CBS series The Equalizer, the team stopped counting after designing 6,000 sets, three years into a five-year run. In theater, he noted, a designer might spend months on a single set. In television, a new one may be needed every week.
He recently wrapped his work on an Amazon Prime Video series based on a graphic novel and started a new project the next day. Some of the tools he uses every day, including the design software Vectorworks, are ones he first learned in Lehigh classrooms.
Ingram's story is a reminder that students don't have to arrive at Lehigh knowing exactly what they want to do. Many start in one college or major and find their direction as they explore their interests.
For students considering Lehigh, Ingram's path illustrates how a flexible curriculum, close faculty mentorship and hands-on experience can open doors to unexpected career paths.
Spotlight Recipient
Lucas Ingram '13
Freelance art director; Theatre major