WOF: Before we start talking about Dramatic Encounters, tell us about the new project you’re working on – the one that’s due to appear in early May.       

NICOLE:     You must have noticed my tummy or the disappearance of my ankles! I’ve been working on this “project” for about 9 months now and have one more month to go! Why didn’t anyone tell me pregnancy is almost 10 months?  

Expecting a baby is the most exciting thing I’ve never been in control of. The waiting is definitely the hardest part now. I’m actually one of those cooks that like to peek in the oven while something is baking, so as you can imagine, I’m very ready to see how this is going to turn out. 

WOF: What was your inspiration for Dramatic Encounters?

NICOLE:     I would have to say it’s been some of the scripts that I’ve written over the years.  It dawned on me one day that there was a recurring theme to many of them regarding the power of one-on-one life-changing exchanges with God.  I’m referring to pieces like Dropping Your Rock and Stretch Out Your Hand—these are encounters where God completely interrupts the status quo and changes everything.  The stories are so powerful because they are full of His love and life-giving hope.  Reading about the way God touched someone’s life so profoundly back then makes me hunger for him to do the same for us today.

WOF: How did you decide to focus on these particular characters?

NICOLE:     Actually, the better question is how did I limit myself to these characters?  When I began looking for the dramatic encounters I wanted to write about, I found them everywhere.  It was the way of Christ to single out individuals and change their lives in a personal and meaningful encounter with him.  The New Testament is full, and I do mean FULL, of such incredible portrayals. God was operating in the same personal way in the Old Testament. It was very hard to decide whose stories to leave out and whose to tell—so there may be other books of dramatic encounters in the future.  It could be a whole “chicken soup” series.  That last part was a joke.  Not about writing more, but about the chicken soup books.

WOF: It was great to hear from Tammie Jean again – after two years of conference appearances she feels like an old friend.  She makes an excellent point about how women are prone to comparing themselves to others.  Why do you think we struggle so with that?

NICOLE:     Women are wired this way. The good news is that we enjoy the upside of this quality on a daily basis.  We desire to be better—we want better things for our families and we want to improve our way of doing things.  Rarely do I meet a woman that isn’t planning how to make her yard look better, or working to make sure her child’s school is meeting their needs or thinking about how to stretch the budget farther… it’s in our nature to “improve.” But the dark side of this gift, left unchecked, becomes constant comparison—never being satisfied, always looking at what others have, or becoming jealous and envious. Tammie Jean’s great contribution is to help us acknowledge this and laugh our way to changing it or keeping it in check.

WOF:Dramatic Encounters is also available as a DVD of dramatic sketches.  How is writing a story for the stage different than for a book? 

NICOLE:     Writing for the stage is like the show part of show and tell.  Remember the day at school when everyone would bring something in and then show it to the class and tell them about it?  Book writing is a lot about telling—not necessarily information, but description—you are free to use words to set a scene and help people “see” something through the pages. But writing for the stage is all about showing, never describing.  The words of description are pretty useless in a script—instead you must show the audience whatever you want them to see or know.

WOF: Did you do all scripts or all chapters first or some combination of the two? 

NICOLE:     A combination of the two.  When the themes of the stories are the same, it doesn’t really matter which one comes first, the stage or the page. But I usually prefer to write the drama first—as it forces me to get to the theme faster.  Oftentimes the drama is harder because I’m limited by what I can show people on stage. While I can write a story about a family living underwater, it would be quite a challenge to pull that off in front of an audience. In that way, the stage can be limiting for me—especially as only one actor.  But writing the drama helps me get to the heart of a piece in a way that the luxury of words can often distract from. Just because I would be free with words to create an underwater world, I could find that no one cares about that world in the slightest, so what have I accomplished?

WOF: In the several of the stories (like John the Baptist and Judas) you have to look at the events through the eyes of a man.  What was taking the male perspective like for you?  Was it difficult at all?

NICOLE:     It wasn’t so difficult, but in fairness, I wasn’t really writing something that is unique to men.  In the dramatic encounter of John the Baptist for example, his story is all about doubt.  Is male doubt different from female doubt?  Not really.  Perhaps in the small ways it may be expressed outwardly, but at the core, doubt knows no gender.  And neither does betrayal, as in the piece I wrote about Judas. 

WOF: When you perform a character over and over – for example, the woman with breast cancer in Stepping Into the Ring – do you find that the character gets set fairly early and doesn’t change, or that she grows over time?      

NICOLE:     Well, that’s interesting. I suppose because the actions in the play are set and the lines are set, the character doesn’t grow any more than the piece allows but I think what happens is that I grow.  The longer I walk in someone’s shoes, so to speak, the more I learn from them and the better I become at representing their story.  So I don’t think the character changes as much as the character of the writer does.  The piece doesn’t change, but the piece changes me.  That’s what I want to say.

WOF: We look forward to seeing you at many of the Women of Faith conferences this year – will you bring baby pictures?

NICOLE:     I’ll do much better than pictures… I’ll bring the baby!