The Daily Times
By: Christina Brey
Mode Theatre marks threshold of fifth year with ‘Walk the Walk’
WATERLOO – Jinx Davis says she’s on the threshold.
Saturday will mark the fifth anniversary of The Mode Theatre, the performance space she also calls home. She’ll look out at the audience during an evening production as a woman who has seen the passing of 50 years.
Yes, it will be an entrance into the future.
But Davis won’t wait to be carried over the threshold. She’ll explode through the doorway – in the manner she always has – looking for more adventure and taking all that she finds in stride.
In five years, Jinx Davis, Andy Pizer and their children have seen their 1937 movie house blossom into a bustling residential performance space, the only one in the nation. Saturday, Davis will welcome guests on the opening night of “Walk the Walk” a thoroughly mixed combination of sketches reflecting her life.
Davis will draw on everything from Shakespeare to vaudeville to express her experiences through theater. “I’ve been working on this all my life,” she said. “The actual production is not going to gel until five minutes before the show.”
She said, at 50, it’s time to honor, utilize and practice the gifts she’ received from others in her life.
She’ll share those gifts with Clare Arena, a Waterloo native, on stage at the July and August performances. Pam Chickering of Waterloo will also come to the footlights in September.
Arena, daughter of Kate and Joe Arena of Waterloo, is a graduate of Waterloo High School and is enrolled in college. Chickering is the editor of the city’s weekly newspaper. Both young women will take part in the performances through music and in other ways, although they still do not know exactly what Davis had in store for them.
“It should be great fun because I want there to be that wonderful competition between women who are aware of there inner strength,” Davis said.
Davis’ own inner strength may come from many influences through her life journey, which she illustrates through her productions.
“Basically, we are the naked, fragile child walking the tightrope,” she said. “The trick is to be able to run freely across with trust there is something much larger there to hold us when we fall.”
Friends and patrons who have been away from the theater since its start will see that trust as well as the same fire and energy that Davis always emits.
“I hope they find I have evolved,” she reflected. “And I hope they find that I am prepared to enter my next stage of life – with more humor and grace.”