The Current

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 Theatre 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. The 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 “The 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.
The 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.
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