Once upon a time, a clown and an actress fell in love and built a theater in a tiny Colorado town.

That fairy tale is still unspooling today, a quarter of a century later.

Jim Jackson and Birgitta De Pree were just two sweethearts and solo theater makers when they dreamed up the Millibo Art Theatre.

It was October of 2001, and as they hiked in Manitou Springs, the newlyweds spoke their wishes into the universe, unaware that someday they would celebrate 25 years of owning and running a successful theater.

“We had this wonderful conversation about what the theater we’d dream up would look like,” De Pree said. “We said we’d have a children’s series, a series for grown-ups where we do new works, and maybe nurture young artists.”

And then fate stepped in and said hello, remember me? Because one week later, the couple met with Deborah Thornton, who was then managing the Business of Art Center (now Manitou Art Center) in Manitou. At the end of their meeting, they happened to mention their theater vision.

Inspired, Thornton, who was working to renovate the stone building at 515 Manitou Ave. into a theater space, wrote a grant. Three months later, Jackson’s solo clown show for children, “Art Guffaw,” debuted in the space. Following that, De Pree’s solo children’s show, “Elephant,” solidified their growing reputation as a children’s theater.

“It was such a heart-filling time,” Thornton said. “I think of all the children rushing in for the children’s theater. He got mats, so kids sat on the floor. The impact they’ve had on individuals and on the theater community with their generous, thought-provoking, and joyful mix of theater is huge.”

Today, almost 25 years later, another opening night has come and gone, this time for the new original show, “Babette’s Lovette: A Valentine’s Day Comedy,” and the couple lounges in the lobby of their 109-seat theater, now housed in an old church off South Tejon Street in the Ivywild neighborhood. They moved here in 2013 after their sophomore home off Busch Avenue, near 21st Street.

“You always think someone else is going to make something happen, or you can join something,” De Pree said. “And this was just an example of if you have a vision and it’s the right time or right place or right people, you can make something happen.”

The lobby reflects the ethos of the MAT – colorful, eclectic, whimsical. Filled with a bar where people can get a glass of wine or buy a sweet treat, often one of Jackson’s home-baked goods. Memorabilia, flyers and articles decorate the walls, throwbacks to the decades of children’s and adult shows, cabarets, puppetry, circus and aerial arts shows, and solo acts by national performers. About 400 shows have graced the space.

“(Jackson and De Pree are) like warm, gooey, chocolate chip cookies,” said MAT Operations Manager Katie Medved, who starred last year as Nora in the MAT’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” directed by her husband, Christian O’Shaughnessy. “But they’re also such visionaries. They have a high quality of artistic vision. Being comedians or doing comedic theater – that’s hard to do, and they make it seem so approachable and easy when it’s not.”

Last night’s Valentine’s-themed production, helmed by De Pree, née Babette Matdiva, her gregarious alter-ego, featured comedic sketches written and produced by Jackson, De Pree and several other local actors.

The Babette character – a statuesque redhead with a curly, quirky bob and beguiling accent – was born in the theater’s nascent years, when they needed an emcee for a show. She now appears once or twice a year.

“I was going to get a traditional French wig, but they didn’t have one,” De Pree said. “So this bizarre, curly, little red wig appeared, and I put it on, and I’d just recently done a play with a Bulgarian accent, and it sort of all just merged together, and this character found me. This outrageous, vivacious, passionate woman started to emcee the shows and became this person who is now part of the MAT.”

Born to entertain

De Pree likes to tell the story of how she and Jackson could have met.

Jackson, a Cañon City native, and De Pree, born in Washington, D.C., to a Swedish mother and American father, who grew up in Africa due to her father’s job in the foreign service, could have met at an international theater festival in Philadelphia, where Jackson performed. De Pree went to every single show at the festival except one – her future husband’s.

“Because he was from Colorado,” she said.

“I’ll see him anytime,” Jackson added.

How they really met was a year later, while speaking on a panel about performing for children, and realizing that Jackson’s show at the festival was the one that got away.

“I laugh about that because I’ve had many opportunities to see his show, so it worked out OK,” De Pree said. “We love that story because we were probably at the same party years before we met.”

Jackson had been a Manitou resident since 1992, using the town as a home base while traveling the country, performing on street corners and stages like New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and The Kennedy Center, and in the Royal Lichtenstein Quarter-Ring Sidewalk Circus, a three-person ensemble billed as the world’s smallest circus, and Chipperfield’s Circus, a touring British circus.

Before relocating to Manitou after they married, De Pree lived in Denver, where she’d earned a master’s at the National Theatre Conservatory, which was part of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts before it closed in 2012. After graduating, she worked throughout the state as an artist in residence, creating her own children’s shows, and planning a life as a repertory theater actor.

But Manitou and the dream of Millibo called, giving them both a place to explore their shared love for creating family theater and shows for grown-ups.

“The adults are laughing at something, and the kids are hearing them laugh, and even if they didn’t get it, they’re curious,” Jackson said. “They’re like, oh, they’re laughing, so now I can laugh. We forget that adults have a huge influence on how kids see the world, in spite of everyone saying social media is the biggest influencer for kids.”

Over time, Thornton has watched the MAT provide a stage and give a voice to many burgeoning and professional actors, directors, writers and theater technicians in the Pikes Peak region.

“They’ve helped teens with the perspective of what you can do with a voice in theater. Birgitta’s been part of giving women a voice in theater,” Thornton said. “The two of them are such a dynamic voice. There’s something also about an intimate theater. They started in an intimate space, and continued in an intimate space, and it brings us right into people’s emotions.”

Masters of their universe

To sit with the couple is to inadvertently take a master class in devised theater – a method of making new work by improvising with an ensemble. It tracks that De Pree is also a theater professor at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

“When you leave a good theater experience, you’re more awake, more alive , more connected,” De Pree said. “You can be moved by a film, but when you see it live, there’s this wonderful danger of it matters that I’m here. This moment is between us. With a film, you can turn it off and come back. You can’t do that in theater.”

Straight plays are also part of the MAT’s repertoire, such as “A Doll’s House,” which blossomed from a casual conversation into a full production.

“I asked Birgitta how it is running a theater of your own, and it evolved into you want to produce your own show? Great, let’s go,” Medved said. “The trust and guidance and providing us the space to do that is so rare, and for someone who says I trust you, but I’m here, and it’s also a little push out of the nest.”

This is what the Jackson and De Pree are so good at – encouraging, embracing, inspiring and guiding all the creatives in their midst and those from around the U.S., like Bill Bowers, a New York City-based mime and actor who’s performed his solo shows at the MAT almost a dozen times since the theater’s early years.

“It’s my favorite place to play,” Bowers said. “They’ve been great about offering me the theater as a place to create something new. I’ve made two shows with them. They’re big bundles of possibility. They’re both very genuine beings and incredibly interested in welcoming people into their space.”

Jackson and De Pree are not only world builders in the theatrical sense, but also in their community. In 2011, they renamed their theater, originally Manitou Art Theatre, to Millibo, a portmanteau of Millie Harrison and Bo Frese, two MAT performers who died unexpectedly in 2011 and 2010, respectively.

“It’s home. That’s true for me and many other artists in this community,” Medved said. “It feels like a landing place where you’re accepted for your creativity and encouraged to explore how you see the world.”

Sustaining a theater isn’t for the cowardly, and surviving the pandemic was a trial that killed many an artistic endeavor across the globe. But the MAT survived, and continues to do well enough that they’re able to pay their staff and the 80 to 90 actors who perform every year.

“That’s important to us because we make our living in the theater and other people should be able to, too,” Jackson said. “And we wish that that were more possible.”

Theater is an expensive artistic endeavor, and a show rarely pays for itself, which isn’t just a MAT issue; it’s industry-wide. Ticket sales usually cover about half the costs of a show, which makes funding from foundations and individual donors vital.

The MAT is doing better than the average, though, thanks in part to income generated through summer camps for kids. Jackson also jokes about the theater being run on bake and bar sales, but it’s all part of ensuring the MAT feels like a welcoming home and not a cold and scary arts institution.

“This community gave us the opportunity to create this space that would have been really hard in a more established city,” De Pree said. “Our vision was so welcomed here. We got so much support. It was going to be about making theater, and it is, but the big thing is it’s really about making theater in a community. That’s the joy of this place. It’s making theater with this community, and people feel a sense of ownership.”