Nina C. Nichols is co-founder/ co-artistic director of The Black Forest Fancies Non-profit Organization. She is a film maker, puppeteer, costume designer, screenwriter, performance artist, illustrator and set/stage designer. Nina began her work in traveling variety shows at the age of seventeen. Her touring works experiment with alternative modes of travel and living such as bio-diesel vehicles and machinery, freight train hopping, bicycle dependence, sustainable community space, horseback travel and salvage. Miss Nichols graduated with honors from the State University of New York at Purchase with a degree in Stop Motion Animation in the field of New Media. She has studied under Broadway set designer Joseph Forbes and sound designer Liz Phillips. Nina has circled the United States seven times with theatrical productions ranging from medicine shows to bicycle drive-ins to large scale operettas.She currently lives in New Orleans and works as a stilt performer, composer and community arts organizer. She works annually as a resident artist at The Dream Community in Taipei, Taiwan leading workshops as a costume designer, parade organizer and puppet builder.

Pandora Andrea Gastelum is a puppeteer, costume designer, writer and performer. She graduated with honors from New York University where she was an awarded essayist and playwright and where she ultimately received a B.F.A. in Theatre, double majoring in the Sociology of Gender. She has studied directing and acting for the stage at La Pietra in Florence and marionette arts under Jan Unger in Prague, Czech Republic. She has worked as a puppeteer, mask and costume designer, and special affects artist both On- and Off- Broadway in New York City. She is co-founder/ co-artistic director of The Black Forest Fancies Non-profit Theatre Collective in her native New Orleans, Louisiana. She has written and performed with this troupe for three years, touring through venues across the continental U.S. Pandora was awarded an artist residency for Fall-Winter 2006-07 at Patravadi Theatre in Bangkok Thailand, where she worked closely with actors and acrobats teaching puppet and mask fabrication and studying Thai performance.She enjoys an annual residency at The Dream Community in Taipei, Taiwan where she builds giant puppets and costumes for the summer parade season and instructs at community workshops on creating art from recycled materials. She looks forward to teaching these skills in schools at 'home' through NOLA's Young Audiences. Miss Gastelum is the recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist's service grant for 2008-09.