Nichols produced costumes, puppets, and props for an operetta titled The Vanities of the Poor, set on the banks of the Mississippi River.  The show debuted during A Studio in the Woods’ FORESTival.  She received a grant to take the show abroad to Spain and France before bringing it back home for a run during New Orleans Fringe Festival.

Nina Nichols is the active president of “The Black Forest Fancies Non-Profit Organization”, an experimental community arts promotional group, helping to extend the gifted members of the arts community of New Orleans to work with dreamers all over the world. Nina is a theatrical designer, parade arts teacher, playwright and installation artist working and living in New Orleans. Her work emerges from a fascination with sustainability, natural diversity, wild pollination and mutation.

“I think that Lucianne said it best when I was working on a puppet and she said, ‘you want it to look as if it just grew there.’ You always hear about ‘site-specific’ installations, but this time I feel like I have had the opportunity to finally make something true to this land and that the intensely diverse and colorful ecosystem here has become part of the way that I smell, feel and see.” – Nina Nichols