estled in the shade of a sycamore tree off Van Buren Street is the Melchoir Marionette Theatre. Its hand-painted backdrop represents the history of puppetry. Rows of wooden benches lead up to the handmade stage.

A large white, custom-made tarp helps protect visitors from the summer sun. But now that the sycamore tree has had 36 years to grow, it provides almost enough shade on its own.

The tree has grown with the theater. It was only a sapling when Peggy Melchior Pearson and her husband, Joe, built the benches, the floor and the stage to open in 1983.

Peggy is a second-generation puppeteer. Her mother, Erica Melchoir, was a German immigrant who briefly studied fashion design and illustration in Berlin before coming to the United States.

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Peggy was born in 1949. Her mother began to puppeteer in the 1950s. “By the time I was 16, she had built marionettes and I had helped her with some of them. I would perform (too),” Pearson said, sitting in the shaded theater on a summer morning.

Shows at the Melchoir Marionette Theatre pause in August, resume in September and conclude in October.

But this October will be the last time Pearson puts away her things at the Nashville theater and totes them back home with her to Greenwood.

After 36 years, Pearson has made the tough decision to stop the marionette shows in Nashville.

Peggy and Joe will both turn 70 next year. Joe is responsible for all of the repairs in the theater. “Joe has done all of that, and he has been such a great supporter of mine. I can’t ask him to fix this again,” she said.

With this change, she’ll have more time to focus on her theater and gallery in Indianapolis, which will remain open, and to visit her new granddaughter in California.

However, that doesn’t mean she’s staying away.

“As much as I hate leaving here, I wouldn’t mind coming and doing a show occasionally in the theater here at the Brown County Playhouse, or a children’s event,” she said.

The history

Melchior has rented the outdoor theater space from local businessman Andy Rogers since 1983.

Peggy and Joe took a day trip to Nashville that year when her mother-in-law offered to watch their three young children for the day.

“It was sort of short notice. We only had a few hours, so I said, ‘Let’s go to Nashville,’” Pearson said.

The couple made their way over to the Ferguson House, where Alice Weaver sat on the front porch, working on her crossword puzzle. Pearson asked Weaver, who sold antiques, if she had any marionettes for sale. Weaver didn’t, but she was curious as to why Pearson wanted them.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m a puppeteer. I do shows professionally. I like to collect vintage figures,’” Pearson remembered.

Weaver asked if the couple had children. Pearson said they did, but they didn’t bring them to Nashville since there wasn’t much for children to do. “We were kind of having a verbal back and forth. I gave her my business card to kind of prove to her that (puppeteering) was actually a profession,” Pearson said with a laugh.

Pearson mentioned to Weaver how a puppet theater would be a good addition in Nashville.

At about 11:30 p.m. that night, Pearson’s phone rang. It was Weaver.

“(She) said, ‘If you’re really serious, you need to speak with Andy Rogers.’ … I thought, ‘Oh well, what the heck.’ I called Andy,” Pearson said.

Without ever seeing Pearson’s show, Rogers later met with her in Nashville. He had two places in mind where Pearson could open the theater: Where it is now, tucked into an alcove along Van Buren Street, or a spot in an alley behind the Brown County Playhouse. He advised her to stay on “the main drag.”

“He said, ‘Make sure you don’t spend a lot of money, because we just don’t know if it’s going to work.’”

In August, Peggy, Joe and their three children piled into their Volvo to get lumber from a local sawmill. The couple went to work building the benches, the deck and the stage.

About 15 years later, they had to do it again. But one of the original benches still sits to the side in the theater.

In August 1983, the theater opened, but only two college students were in the audience.

“They had sort of that, ‘Show me what you can do’ attitude. Like, ‘A puppet show? Really?’” Pearson said.

Tickets were a dollar at the time, so Pearson made $2 for the day. “I think I cried all the way home for all of this work, because I had been used to doing venues where people provide the audience for me. You go to a school, you do a church function, a shopping center the audience is there. You get paid, they provide the audience, I didn’t have to do anything. This is a whole different animal,” she said.

It eventually came to her that people were forgetting about the show times when they would walk by. “They all were enthusiastic, but they were coming by at a time that wasn’t exactly show time, so when they would go around the corner, they would forget,” she said.

So, she printed off fliers with the show times on them. Her husband and her daughter got to work passing them out in town.

“We were full. It was like 30 people, a dollar a head. I thought it was wonderful I made $30,” she said.

No two days the same

Pearson attended the Cleveland Institute of Art, earning a degree in graphic design and photography. She worked for an advertising agency before her children were born. She still uses those skills today to market her two theaters.

Pearson also operates Peewinke’s Puppet Studio in the Indiana State Museum, where she works as the artistic director. Her daughter, Heidi Shackleford, manages the technology side of the business and does off-site performances with the Melchoir Marionettes. She does the Slightly Haunted Puppet Theatre in Indianapolis, too.

Heidi’s two daughters — Pearson’s two granddaughters — also get on stage to perform.

Pearson partnered with Debbi White as a “second set of hands,” and the two opened a theater in Indianapolis in 1997 before moving it to the Indiana State Museum in 2016.

Pearson said she likes puppetry because no two days are the same.

“Some days I perform, some days I build, some days I repair, some days I do marketing, some days I sit with people like you. I think what I like about the art form in puppetry is that it’s probably one of the very few art forms where you do everything,” she said.

“With puppetry, you’re involved with all of the arts, whether that’s pulling your music together, your sound system, sometimes electricity — you gotta do that kind of stuff, building stages, costuming — and then, of course, performing. It’s all into one.”

She likes that puppetry is “one of the original art forms,” too.

“I like to emphasize puppetry was very necessary before we had books. Almost every culture in the world, Asia in particular, had some form of puppetry … all of those were originally used not for entertainment, but for education. They told the stories of their particular religion,” she said.

She motions behind her to a backdrop she painted about 10 years ago, featuring images of famous puppets like Kermit the Frog, Charlie McCarthy, Howdy Doody and Pinocchio.

Pearson said it’s important to attract families to Nashville who will return generation after generation.

“If you develop a family to come, if you bring children, they will come with their children, which is what I experience now at Halloween,” she said.

“A lot of them come just because of the puppet theater. … They call and they say, ‘I’m coming. I want to pick a day when you’re here, because I’m bringing my kids or grandkids.’ I love it.”

Children 18 months and older are “mesmerized” when she comes on the stage with her marionettes, Pearson said — “especially now almost more than in the past, because kids see so much on screens. They see a movie, they see a TV, they see an iPad or even see mom’s phone, but they don’t usually see things live. If they do, it’s something like ‘Disney on Ice,’ or something in a big arena that is so far away,” she said.

“But here, the kids are usually sitting in the first two rows, and the marionettes are a good size. … I think it’s even more important now than it was years ago, because they don’t see much live anymore.”

As she’s talking, she points out two faded paintings of a puppet and a man playing music. “Do you see those two paintings? I used to have six. They are so old. I had one person ask me, ‘How did you crinkle that paint so much?’” she said with a laugh.

“I just left it outside for decades, three-and-a-half decades. You can buy that kind of paint now. You’re looking at the real vintage.”

Her favorite part about working in Nashville is “the quaintness” of the town and “the challenge every weekend of being able to pull people in from the sidewalk.”

Some favorite memories she will take with her after her last shows on Oct. 28 include two weddings that occurred in the theater. For one of them, Pearson and her marionettes were hired as the entertainment. A woman dressed as a gypsy played the accordion.

“They had about 30 people in here, a Styrofoam cooler with beers in it, and that was the wedding,” she said.

“The justice of the peace was there, the accordion player was there, I did the puppet show and they got married and they had a beer and they went to dinner.”

Another memory is when a woman from Chicago complimented her on the sycamore tree leaves she “brought in.”

“She said, ‘This is so cute. I just absolutely love it, and I love the fact that you brought all of these leaves in,’” Pearson said with a laugh.

“They are all from the sycamore tree. We have to clean them up.”

Pearson said she loves the Halloween show, especially the evening one, which will take place on Oct. 13 this year.

“In October, the weather is a bit iffy, but I absolutely love it in here because we have little twinkle lights and the stage is lit up, sometimes the wind is blowing, and this is all full of leaves,” she said.

When her marionettes are put away and the backdrops are gone, Pearson said she hopes someone else in the community can pay to professionally rebuild the theater so that a variety of performers can use it, like magicians, poets and guitar players.

“Even I would like coming down here once in a while to do something, but the thing is that it needs to be redone, and it needs to be professionally done. I think it’s a great little space,” she said.

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September and October will be the last opportunities you can catch shows at the Melchior Marionette Theatre. It’s on the west side of Van Buren Street near the intersection with Franklin Street. 

Shows will start at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Saturdays, Sept. 1 and 15

Slightly Haunted Puppet Theatre shows begins Saturday, Sept. 29 on the following schedule:

Sunday, Sept. 30: 1 and 3 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 6: 1 and 3 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 7: 1 and 3 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 12: 1 and 3 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 13: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 14: 1, 2 and 3 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 19: 1 and 3 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 20: 1, 2, 3 and 4 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 21: 1, 2 and 3 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 26: 1, 2 and 3 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 27: 1, 2, 3 and 4 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 28: 1, 2 and 3 p.m.

All tickets are $5 for the 20-minute show. Children under 2 are admitted free. Free popcorn is available at each show. Tickets are sold 15 minutes before show time. For group reservations, call 1-800-849-4853.

For more information, visit melchiormarionettes.com.

For more information on Peewinkle’s Puppet Studio at the Indiana State Museum, visit peewinklespuppets.org.

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