NAT ALIA TEM ESG EN. on being home Written by Natalia Temesgen Images by Carrie Beth Wallace
It was morning, already hot. I was sitting in the back seat of my mom’s minivan, looking out the window as we drove past the thin bridge-driveways along Cherokee Avenue. Sarah McLachlan’s “Adia” played on the radio. It was the summer of 1998. We had only lived in Columbus a short time then. In my early childhood in New York, I grew up taking dance lessons and auditioning for commercials and movies. When we moved to Rochester, MN for my father’s job, I got into the children’s theatre and took ballet classes. It only made sense that I was now on my way to Day 1 at the local theater camp. That year, Springer Academy was held at St. Elmo Elementary School due to renovations at the Opera House. We made the right turn onto Garrard Street and pulled into a parking lot. Mom and I walked into the building where I would meet other artsy, unique, and outgoing kids. I got my gray shirt with the drama faces printed in green. I wrote my first name in the box. In the summers to follow, I began to write my nickname, “Nat,” which Academy Director Ron Anderson would call me from then until he passed away many years later. As a young camper, I began to understand what it meant to be an artist. We were children, but we were still encouraged to treat theatre as a craft. I met people there I would go on to work with as an adult. Sara and Jef Holbrook, the dynamic couple behind the Springer Film Institute and producers of my web series “Grounds,” were my classmates. Sally Baker, the current director of the Springer <strong>The</strong>atre Academy, was my teacher. Some others I came to know there are now professional artists working in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Europe. But some of us are still here. And what we learned then has become foundational to what makes our local arts scene so powerful today: every voice is important, good art requires discipline and hard work, and a production is more powerful when its artists truly collaborate. I spent a decade in the Northeast after graduating from Columbus High School in 2004. I studied playwriting in college and graduate school, and began working as a playwright in Manhattan. <strong>The</strong> opportunities for theater professionals in New York are overwhelming. Calls for new plays, especially plays by emerging writers, are plentiful. I began to have a promising early career. Upon returning to Columbus in 2013, I panicked at the thought that the only producing theater in town was the Springer Opera House. One theater can only do so many shows, especially new plays which can be financially risky. I knew I needed to return to those early lessons of collaborative artwork if I wanted to continue thriving as a playwright. In 2014, I produced a staged reading and subsequent full-scale production of my play “<strong>The</strong> Old Ship of Zion” at the National Civil War Naval Museum. This journey drew me to two of my dearest theater collaborators: Jonathan Samuel Eddie Perkins, director of the Fountain City Slam, and the late Tamara L. Curry-Gill, actor and director. I worked with near strangers who became like family. <strong>The</strong> production was a financial success, thanks in part to the early support of local residents with a vision for arts and culture and the strong attendance of the performances. I believe the artistic journey of 2014 was responsible for my biggest growth as an artist thus far. I would put it above graduating from Tisch with my MFA or being produced off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane. Because that year back home in Columbus, I finally put old lessons into practice. 9
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