“Follow your passion, be prepared to work hard and sacrifice, and, above all, don't let anyone limit your dreams.” - Donovan Bailey. As an 11-year-old girl, Nina dreamt of becoming a stand-up comedian. She actively kept writing her scripts and practiced in front of a mirror with the hope that someday she will be able to perform. For a part of her life she thought that “you couldn’t stutter and be a comedian” and gave up on her dream. After attending a National Stuttering Association conference her dream was reawakened and through hard work eventually stepped onto a comedy stage. Her main focus of comedy is to help her audience understand disability culture and empowerment. Nina is part of the comedy troupe called The Comedians with Disabilities Act, which aims to raise awareness while making people laugh. She has also raised awareness through her children’s book “Once Upon An Accommodation: A Book About Learning Disabilities” and her one-person show, Going Beyond Inspirational, which provides a humorous look at growing up with learning and speech disabilities.

Can you tell us more about your journey as a stand-up comic? What challenges do you face as a comedian?N: I wanted to be a stand-up comedian since I was 11 years old. I was always a big fan of comedy and eventually wanted to be a comedian. I would call open mics when I was a teenager to find out if they allowed minors to perform. I would write material that was awful, but nonetheless I wrote it and then practiced in front of the mirror. But I had never seen anybody like me do stand up comedy, so I thought that you couldn’t stutter and be a comedian. The dream of becoming a stand-up comedian died and I pursued other things.
When I was in my mid thirties, I attended a conference at the National Stuttering Association. There, I met other people who stuttered. Being around people like me, I noticed how I internalized the interruptions of other people. When you stutter, you are interrupted all the time. You're interrupted when you order your coffee, you're interrupted in the middle of saying your name, but I had also internalized these interruptions for my own wants and desires and dreams. My dream of being a stand-up comedian was interrupted, among other things.
I came back from the conference and I started making a number of changes in my life. Within six months I had stepped onto the comedy stage and my dream of becoming a stand-up comedian was revived. I've been doing comedy for almost nine years and I have my book coming out in summer of 2019 titled "Stutter Interrupted: The Comedian Who Almost Didn’t Happen". You can read more about my journey to comedy and beyond there!
Just like any other comedian, the primary challenge I've had is writing new material. This is both in the content and the construction of the jokes. Mining your life for funny things or something you feel strong enough to talk about on stage is always a challenge for a comedian and I am no different. I think where I might be different is that I have to go to more open mics to try out new material compared to most seasoned comedians. When I write a joke, I don't really think about where I'm going to stutter or what words I'm going to stutter on, so I don't know how it's going to come out until I say it in front of an audience. I work really hard to outline the material and see where I can punctuate certain jokes with how I say it. I do a lot of college gigs and keynotes so it’s important to practice and see how my act will play out. Trying to find an audience that is compatible with my perspective is something that I'm always looking for!

Where do you get the ideas/material for your comedy script? What is your most memorable performance to date?N: I get ideas for my material from life in general. As a person with a disability, there are absurd things that people say all the time. Before I started doing comedy, I would get really mad at these things, but now I see them as a gift. It's like they're giving you a joke to tell everybody so I can make fun of them.
Another way I find ideas is when something really bothers me. When there is a topic that has been swimming around in my mind and I find that I'm perseverating about it over and over and over again. That is when I know there might be a joke in it. A lot of times when I talk about these things to my husband or my friends, a joke will come out of me and it's important to observe myself when that happens and write that down.
I get very sentimental about my comedy, so when something that I really love happens, I cry. Here are two very different times I cried.
Crying has happened quite a few times as I have been lucky enough to have some really wonderful experiences in comedy. One that is connected to a famous person was the night that I performed with Dave Chappelle. He's one of my comedic heroes and has had a lot of influence on me. I made fun of him during my set and when he got back onstage, he, naturally, made fun of me back. To be made fun of by Dave Chappelle is such an honor. That night I went to my car and I wept.
My favorite audiences are audiences that have disabilities because they get what I’m talking about. I don't have to explain things that they are already on the same page about and I've had a number of these shows where I'm just so touched that I can talk to my community and reflect their experiences. My most recent one was doing a show at the National Stuttering Association which was probably my fourth show there, but this was as part of the conference. It was just incredible to have my experience as a person who stutters reflected back to me from an audience who totally got it. And yes, I left that night and cried!

What inspired you to get involved in disability advocacy?N: I sometimes joke that you shouldn't pity me for having a disability, but you can pity me for going to Catholic school with a disability in the 1980s! There are plenty of Catholic schools today that are very good but this was not my experience growing up! It was so difficult because my teachers fought against me having accommodations. This was before the Americans with Disabilities Act, so the school didn’t think they had to give equal access to a student with disabilities.
As a consequence I developed learned helplessness, which is when you try and you fail, you try and you fail, so you just stop trying. In addition, I had low self-esteem and at times even thought about hurting myself. I eventually went to high school at a public school where it was normal for kids to have an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). I had a wonderful special ed teacher along with my parents and others who helped me and showed me that I was capable. Once I was able to build myself up from what happened in middle school, I still encountered people who doubted my abilities. There were teachers in college and graduate school who thought that if I still needed accommodations at that level, then I shouldn't be in the program.
The discrimination I faced is something no one else should go through. I think it's important to speak out about my own experiences, to teach people what it is like to have a non-apparent disability. People often times either don't think it's a big deal or they think it's the worst tragedy ever. I would like them to see that it is a normal part of life. I also hope to spread the word that community and advocacy is a big piece of having a disability. To find people who go through the same experiences as you is very helpful in becoming the person that you want to be.

How did you get the idea to come up with a children's book, Once Upon an Accommodation? How can this book help kids with learning disabilities?N: I was thinking one day to myself, “someone really ought to write a book for kids to show them what it's like to ask for an accommodation and to be a better advocate.” I looked it up and there was no book like this and I thought I should be the one who writes it. When I pictured the illustrations for my book, I immediately thought of my friend Dave, who goes by the stage name Mean Dave for doing comedy. Dave drew flyers for comedy shows with stick figure caricatures of comedians. I thought his illustrations would feel like a punk rock Richard Scarry style and would be perfect for what I wanted to say in my book. A pet peeve I have about a lot of books about disabilities (and dyslexia specifically) is that there are a lot of words and not a lot of pictures. Dave’s illustrations explain each concept in a picture.
The intent of the book is to help kids demystify their disability and how to request an accommodation and what an accommodation means. I chose the 504 meeting in school to do this. 504 is a plan that some kids have when they are in k-12. Some kids have an IEP instead but there are some similarities. I chose 504 plans in my book because of the connection to the civil rights law and the accommodation plan that will follow them into adulthood when they go to college. Hopefully the book will help to educate parents as well as teachers about the 504 process!
Another element that I wanted in the book shows that there is a legacy of people with disabilities who have fought for the civil rights of people like me who have less apparent disabilities. I wanted to show a connection for the child with a learning disability to the larger disability community to help change how we think about the word disability. The Disabled community has strengths that go unseen and many of us with non-apparent disabilities still have a stigma about having a physical or sensory disability. We need to join together instead of separating ourselves and I hope that my book starts to do this.

What challenges did you face during your school years? How did you motivate yourself to face those challenges?N: The first major challenge I remember related to my learning disability was three hours of homework I would have every night in the third grade. Not every kid in my class had three hours of homework like I did. What happened was I was showing signs of a learning disability that was impacting how long it took me to do my homework. My learning disability manifests as dyslexia, so I have difficulty when I read, write and generally when I process written or auditory language. Even though these challenges were significant, accommodations help to show what I knew. An even bigger challenge than my disability was other people's attitudes about my abilities. This was primarily from teachers. Regarding bullying, sometimes I think we focus too much on the kids and not enough on the system that might enable kids to bully. I, of course, was bullied as a kid. Those were kids who made fun of me because of my stuttering or because I was a little chubby, but that paled in comparison to my teachers. My teachers would not allow the accommodations that my parents asked for. Their attitude was that I didn't belong in the school, that my accommodations would be unfair to other kids and that I just wasn't very smart. That's why I wasn't being able to produce the work I was assigned.
My parents every year would advocate for my accommodations. Sometimes the advocacy would work for a short time and then my teachers would lose interest, but every year until the ninth grade it was always a fight. Even though the advocacy didn't always work on the teachers, it did work on me. I saw that my parents believed in me. They saw that I was capable and that I had the right to the same education as everybody else.
I eventually went to public school, which was very fortunate for me. There I had a special ed teacher, Ms. Bramlett, who had high expectations of her students. She identified our talents while still letting us be us. She and others similar to her helped me to recognize my talents and abilities. I started to work at a daycare when I was 14 and I realized I could hold the attention of three year olds for a really long time. This helped me to develop abilities outside of school and teaching was something that would become very important to me.
Humor is also something that got me through some of these challenges. After school, I would go home and I would watch hours of TV. I would videotape all the stand-up comedy that I could. I would listen to comedy albums. I would even read books on the subject. On occasion, I would do pranks. One of these pranks was in the eighth grade. I talked another kid in my class into putting toilet water into my teacher’s coffee cup. It was just a teeny tiny bit, but I did get back at her for not giving me accommodations and making me feel bad about myself. It's probably something I shouldn't have done but at the time, I wasn't being heard and my needs weren't being met. It felt good to have some agency.

Which comedian do you admire the most and why?N: In the context of this interview, Gilda Radner and Dick Gregory come to mind. Gilda was always someone I loved when I was growing up and after recently watching her biographical movie, Love, Gilda, I remembered how much of an advocate she was when she had breast cancer. She was so open about it and even though I hadn't thought about that in many years, I could see how much she influenced me. Similarly, Dick Gregory was a brilliant writer and comedian, but he was also able to blend that with his civil rights activism and comedy.

What is your favorite place to visit? What do you love about that place?N: Since I am a keynote speaker as well as a comedian, I travel a lot. Some of my favorite places to visit include many areas of Montana, Savannah, Georgia, and the Catskill mountains in New York. These are places I crave going back to again and again. I can't always explain why.
Then there's Ireland! I went to Ireland two years ago on my honeymoon and that probably wins out for my favorite place. It's beautiful there, but the people were so funny and warm and authentic. I really enjoyed my time there. It's a great place to do comedy. Plus the best bacon I've ever had was in Ireland!

What do you like to do when you are with your family/friends?N: I usually find myself just hanging out with friends or family. Sometimes we go to shows, hikes or movies. Since comedy and writing my book have taken up so much time it has been difficult to do these things.

What tips/advice do you have for those in our community who want to become a comedian?N: My main tip for absolutely anybody who wants to be a comedian is to be funny. That is the basic requirement that you need to be a comedian.
The second is to develop your voice and figure out what you want to say. You shouldn't live up to other people's expectations of you. You should tell them who you are. I think this is especially important for people with disabilities who want to do comedy. People in the media commonly told us who and what we should be. Disability is usually represented in ways that are one-dimensional. Many times we are portrayed as inspirational minor characters who teach non-disabled people a lesson or as villains trying to get retribution for whatever made them disabled, just to name a couple of examples. There are nuances that aren't represented in the media. We are more than our disabilities! As a comedian, I feel it is important that I give a truthful account of what it's like to be me.

Any special message for our community?N: What I would like to see the disability community do is join together. So many times people with non-apparent disabilities don't talk to people with more apparent disabilities. It seems like we internalize the stigma that our society has set for us and we play that out in relating to each other. I would like to see us support each other and a great example of that is Michael O'Connell, a friend who has since passed, but he was the creator of our comedy troupe, the Comedians with Disabilities Act. He created a platform for people with different disabilities to do comedy and to express ourselves. From that, we created comedy albums. We went on tour and we shared our experiences in true in authentic ways. What he started helped me to develop my voice as a comedian.