Theater director wears many hats—and chicken

Birgitta De Pree has put a chicken on her head 44 times this summer — so far.

It’s how her one-woman children’s show, “The Emperor’s New Clothes . . . and Ugly Ducks,” begins.

She points fondly to the stuffed hen perched on a shelf in the back room of the Manitou Art Theater, next to an ominous red sign reading, “The Missing Nose.”

“Wild stuff happens here,” says De Pree, the type of tall blond woman who can pull off wearing zany yellow pants.

VENUE: The Manitou Art Theater, or MAT, which hosts new works for children and adults, operates out of the Business of Art Center’s Venue 515 on Manitou Avenue.

“We only seat 115 adults,” says De Pree, who founded the theater with husband — and bona fide clown — Jim Jackson, nearly seven years ago. “But you come into this little space, and there’s something very special about it. People don’t know what they’re going to see.”

BACKGROUND: De Pree grew up in Africa, the daughter of a Swedish mother and American father. She made her way to the National Theater Conservatory in Denver for graduate school and began finding gigs throughout the state. “Most everyone moved to New York or L.A. I just wasn’t ready to go there. I always thought, ‘I’ll go next year.’”

WHY DO IT HERE: “Things seem to have lined up for us here,” says De Pree, explaining that a mere four months after submitting their proposal for a theater, she and Jackson were staging shows. “We do mostly original stuff, and there’s no other place doing that. Theatreworks does Shakespeare and the FAC (Fine Arts Center) does its thing. And then here’s this little quirky show in Manitou . . . If we lived in Seattle, there’d be 15 other companies doing what we do.”

TAKE ON THE SCENE: De Pree says that, in a strange way, the artistic community in Colorado Springs has bonded in the face of adversity — rallying against the conception that it’s not an artsy town. “For me, I’ve found it a really welcoming and collaborative artistic community, but I think there’s definitely room to grow.”

GREATEST CHALLENGES: It’s precisely this growth — expanding MAT’s audience base — that she finds most difficult. She is driven, she says, to reach theater-

people who might not think of themselves as such.

GREATEST REWARDS: “You can make a difference in the community here . . . There’s a sense of vibrancy. You create a place where people come together. I didn’t expect that. I was just thinking, ‘We’re going to be able to make work.’ But then there’s this whole other level, this community aspect. If the theater were to get much larger, you might forget that.”

TYPICAL DAY: De Pree says it’s impossible to describe a typical day. “Because we’re such a small operation, we do everything: we direct, we’re in the shows, we sell tickets,” she says, adding that her work spills into her family time and vice versa.

“There’s no split. You’ll be baking cookies while you’re taking ticket orders.” Birgitta De Pree has spent the summer playing “The Emperor’s New Clothes . . . and Ugly Ducks” for young crowds at libraries across the region.