DVP INTERVIEW: NINA G AND ALICE WONG

https://goo.gl/FisgAu

Alice Wong interviewed Nina G for the Disability Visibility Project™ at StoryCorps San Francisco on October 2nd, 2014. In this clip, Nina talks about her experience as America’s only female stuttering comedian, and how being a woman and a person living with a disability informs her experience as a comic. She also talks about how she uses comedy as a way to confront discrimination and challenge ableism.

Text Transcript:

[Sound of people talking at a bar]

[Clapping]

Nina G: My friend Dave, when he introduces me, he says, “What can I say about Nina that wouldn’t take a really long time for her to say about herself?”

[Music 01 begins: Fast-paced drumming with piano/keyboard, fun]

I say that I’m America’s only female stuttering stand-up comedian and I’m America’s favorite because I really am the only one. Like, I’m the only stuttering stand-up comedian in the U.S. and in fact I used to — when I first started doing comedy, I said I was the world’s only, but there was a woman who popped up in England, um, so I cannot use that “world’s only” anymore.

Alice Wong: And are there certain words where you know you’ll stutter a little more, so if you want to emphasize a certain word, but you know you’ll stutter, will you kind of reshape the structure of what you will say?

Nina G: You know? I try not to. I try not to. But there is one, one sentence that I do say that I know that I stutter more on this sequencing, and it works well comedically. And so, it s the only time that I stutter for a comedic emphasis which is… orgasms and stuttering have a lot in common because they both take a hell of fucking long. (laughter) So…