From the ‘Ground’ Up: Local Playwright, Natalia Temesgen, Shoots for the Stars – and Makes It

Some people are born to be storytellers. They have it in their blood – the ability to thread language and image into new worlds. It’s not impossible to learn this art; even the best artists will tell you their hard work and dedication got them farther than any birthright talent.

Yet it would be hard to describe Natalia Temesgen as anything other than a born storyteller. A playwright, actor, screenwriter, newspaper columnist, parent and teacher – there’s little she’s done that hasn’t been an act of creation in some form or another. The last few years though? She’s leapt to the next level.

Just a minor rundown of some of what Natalia has worked on recently: A miniseries, “Grounds,” set and produced entirely in Columbus. A writing gig on the Netflix megahit “Dear White People,” and another on the upcoming HBO drama “Julia.” An upcoming project for Hulu, “Reasonable Doubt,” developed with a writer’s room entirely made up of people of color. And more projects on the horizon.

“I’ve evolved so much as an artist in these last couple years,” Natalia said, speaking from her porch in Columbus. She recalled how she had originally learned she had a spark for bringing stories to life.

“We moved to Columbus when I was eight, and even before then, I loved performing,” she said. “I always imagined that would be my connection to storytelling. I always loved, like many kids now, making these videos with my friends when they would come over, putting on little plays.”

It was at college that she discovered her true passion, the coming-together of all her talents: writing for stage and screen. She wrote a play for school and entered it into a contest, which she won, catapulting her production to New York City, where she was able to watch actors auditioning for the roles she had created.

“It was so cool to me. I love playing The Sims, and it was almost like a version of that,” she said. “You create characters, and people are putting life into them. That was the bug, and I knew I wanted to do more of it.”

She finished her English degree at Princeton and moved straight onto her master’s in dramatic writing, before finding her way back to Columbus, where her husband, now a prominent lawyer in town, was finishing up his legal exams. She began teaching in CSU’s English department, writing plays and shorts when she could and penning a weekly column for the Ledger-Enquirer.
Her dream was to begin writing for television, but even with the burgeoning film industry in Georgia, she knew it would be difficult to truly build a career without moving to a major hub. That’s what initially got her interested in co-creating “Grounds.”

“I wanted to write for TV, but everyone was telling me, ‘It’s really hard for you to do that if you aren’t here (in Los Angeles).’ Of course, I can’t just leave for nothing. They were like well, maybe to get your foot in the door, you could have a web series, some kind of representation of your voice.”

The series, which debuted early this year on YouTube for free on the Argo Navis studio page, takes place over a day in Fountain City Coffee. It features a variety of narrative short films that explore the “funny, moving, and quirky dynamics between the patrons and employees” at the beloved downtown spot. Natalia teamed up with actors and producers Jef and Sara Holbrook to create the series, which was produced entirely with local talent. The crew rented out Fountain City Coffee for two days and CSU students helped with the production.

After filming wrapped, Jef edited the cuts and said he and Sara recorded every line of dialogue and every sound in post-production, creating coffee noises by rattling their own plates and mugs into a microphone. It was an intense process, but Sara said she was happy she did it.

“It’s always inspiring to work with other creative, powerful women, and the whole experience is something I look back on fondly,” she said.

Meanwhile, Natalia had found a break.

“It was a lot of feeling weird about being 30, living in Georgia, being a mom, and just still hustling, trying to make this crazy thing happen. But I thought, if i don’t try hard, i can’t say it wasn’t meant to be. I have to put my best foot forward,” she said. “I would send emails to all my friends out there, saying, hey do you think your manager might want to read my script?
One friend of mine had been doing “Dear White People,” and every season he had just been going up the ranks. He said they had been staffing season 4, and I was like what, well here’s my script.”

It led to an interview with the showrunner, Justin Simien. They did the interview over video, with Simien in his car. After their talk, he thanked her and went into his office to interview some more people who had been there in person. She thought that was probably the end of it.

A week later, she had the job, and was on her way to the writers room. She stayed at the studio as a writer for a month before COVID cut it short, and she finished the rest of the work from home.

It hasn’t stopped since. She moved on to writing on “Julia” for HBO “Reasonable Doubt” for Hulu. She continues to shop around other projects too, including an adaptation of a young adult novel. Oh, and she continues to teach full time as a tenured professor.

So Natalia can tell stories. But I wondered, why continue to do it here, in Columbus? With her success, why not move to Atlanta, or Los Angeles? Part of it, she says, is that her families have lives, jobs, schools here. But there’s something else, too.

“Columbus is so rich,” she said. “There’s something we are missing on some level when compared to Los Angeles or Boston, where mass of people is always going to bring a little more diversity, a richness. But I also feel like Columbus is haunted in a lot of ways. There’s just a lot of rich inspiration to me when I walk around. There’s just tons of stories, sitting under the surface, just waiting.. In LA you don’t feel that way, it’s just so saturated with the here and now and the glitter and the urgency. The space doesn’t speak very much to you, you can’t even hear it at all anymore. Here, I still hear a lot of things.”

By Scott Berson