I believe my role as a playwright is to tap into a slice of our collective unconscious and filter it through the perspective of my life experience. I collect the ideas that are on the tips of people’s tongues, but they haven’t said yet, or don’t know how to express. I infuse these ideas into characters and dialogue on paper which eventually end up on stage, for people to experience and ruminate. “I was thinking that,” they say. “Yeah, on some level I was.” I write in all kinds of genres -zany comedy, absurd, historical, and occasionally drama -- but the underlying principle which ties all my work together is hope. When I was in elementary school, my Hebrew school teacher took me aside one day and said, “Your name, ‘Nadine’ and ‘Nachamah’ in Hebrew means, ‘hope.’ That’s what you represent for our future.” I figured she was referring to the fact that I was the only child who was actually listening to her and trying to learn. But maybe their was something in my compassion and thoughtfulness for what she was doing that gave her hope. If I’m tackling a difficult issue, I feel my role is to explore the issue through the characters, and somehow transform, uplift, and inspire audiences. I want the audience to realize that there is something they can do in their own lives to make this world just a little bit more filled with peace and joy, that there is an angle from which we can find courage and hope -- that art can transcend the seemingly insurmountable, and can take us with it. In recent years, I have focused on women’s issues and strong roles for women, in addition to tackling current social issues, disability, and overcoming prejudice. I have written about historic women and the mark they have left on the world, about the oppression of women and what we can do about it, and more simply the personal voices and struggles that need to be heard. The most rewarding aspect of this work is when I know I have made a difference -- when I get an email from a high school teacher in Florida saying they used a monologue I wrote on postpartum depression for their student’s public speaking competition, and I know I have touched these girls’ lives, or when people thank me for the honesty and truthfulness in my writing.