Asia Nichols

Asia Nichols (she/her) is a nomadic playwright and writer/director from Vallejo, Calif.

She writes surrealism, dark comedy and horror — often drawing from folktales and exploring the intersections of womanhood, Black cultures and mental health. In 2011, she sold all her stuff to backpack across South Asia. Since then, she's been vagabonding around the world while looking after uncanny creatures and conjuring up twisted tales inspired by her adventures.

Her plays have premiered at Fade to Black Play Fest, The Navigators Theater, MOJOAA Performing Arts and elsewhere. Darling(s) and Less Marvelous Monsters, a play following 19th-century conjoined sisters, was a semi-finalist in the 2023 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and received the SLF Gulliver Travel Research Grant. So Unfair, an...

Asia Nichols (she/her) is a nomadic playwright and writer/director from Vallejo, Calif.

She writes surrealism, dark comedy and horror — often drawing from folktales and exploring the intersections of womanhood, Black cultures and mental health. In 2011, she sold all her stuff to backpack across South Asia. Since then, she's been vagabonding around the world while looking after uncanny creatures and conjuring up twisted tales inspired by her adventures.

Her plays have premiered at Fade to Black Play Fest, The Navigators Theater, MOJOAA Performing Arts and elsewhere. Darling(s) and Less Marvelous Monsters, a play following 19th-century conjoined sisters, was a semi-finalist in the 2023 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and received the SLF Gulliver Travel Research Grant. So Unfair, an anthology screenplay subverting age-old fairytales, has been supported by SFFILM and Stranded (a tale within the anthology) won the BlackStar Film Fest screenplay award.

In 2021, her debut short film, Daraluz, won the grand prize at entertwine and WOCU's inaugural 48-Hour Horror Film Fest and streamed on Shudder. Currently, she's adapting the fable into a feature film.

Scripts

Darling(s) and Less Marvelous Monsters

by Asia Nichols

Cast Size

7—10

Genre

dark comedy,

horror,

period

Darling(s) and Less Marvelous Monsters is a two-act trip inspired by the story of Millie Christine McKoy — 19th-century conjoined twin sisters sold into the entertainment business at 10 months old, known as the “Two-Headed Nightingale” and the “Carolina Twins.”

The story begins on a steam train in North Carolina, the twins' birthplace, and ventures across the U.S. and the U.K. When a misleading flyer ignites a...

Darling(s) and Less Marvelous Monsters is a two-act trip inspired by the story of Millie Christine McKoy — 19th-century conjoined twin sisters sold into the entertainment business at 10 months old, known as the “Two-Headed Nightingale” and the “Carolina Twins.”

The story begins on a steam train in North Carolina, the twins' birthplace, and ventures across the U.S. and the U.K. When a misleading flyer ignites a debate over their identity, the twins are thrust down an uncanny path through their own frightful, fantastical past.

From being exhibited in dime museums by showmen to presiding over a makeshift court where they challenge their mother's maternity, the play explores the duality of freedom and lost connections. As the twins struggle to find their place in the world, each scene unfolds like a traveling sideshow act, unpacking their complicated existence and debating how to remain liberated while still being connected.