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Remembering Zona Gale
Portage Daily
Register
By: Lisa Cestkowski
August 14, 1997
Portage--Like
Portage’s Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Zona Gale, Jinx Davis, actress and
owner of an avant garde theater in Waterloo, is very much a citizen of the
world, but also very much a member of her own small community. During
Saturday’s Friendship Village Celebrates Zona Gale observance, Davis will be
portraying Zona’s mother Eliza in an interactive play, titled “Hearts
Kindred—Eliza and Zona Gale.”
“There are lot of reasons why I am involved in this,” said Davis, noting that the connection she feels to Gale as an artist with a relationship to a small town is just one of them. She also happened to be acquainted with the playwright, Nancy Breitsprecher, a Zona Gale scholar who was a patron of Davis’ Mode Theatre, an old movie house she converted into a residential gallery and theater space about five years ago. “Nancy knows more about Zona than anyone living now,” said Davis.
For her own part, Davis said she has been aware of Zona Gale’s writing through the years, but did not have an intimate knowledge of her stories. Then she read “Hearts Kindred” and began working with Breitsprecher and quickly found herself absorbed in the life and times of Zona Gale, although she admits it took her awhile to warm up to Gale’s turn-of-the-century writing style.
“It wasn’t until yesterday that I had a chance to go
back to Zona’s writing, and I saw Zona differently,” Davis said Monday, noting
that she found the author’s short stories especially poignant. “I found a
whole new fondness and joy to the approach of Zona Gale,” Davis said. 
The core of Breitsprecher’s play is the relationship
between Eliza and Zona, which is reflective of the great matriarchal connection
carried throughout Gale’s work, Davis said. Adaptations have been made to
the original full-length play because of time constraints and Davis’ desire to
interact with the audience. “I will be Eliza and I will be interacting
with the people there,” explained Davis. “I do the kind of theater where I
don’t like to separate the performer from the audience. I like to break down
that wall.” 
Davis thinks the library room where the play will be performed will create a warm intimate environment befitting the small scale of the one-woman play and promoting audience interaction and spontaneity. Of course, an even more ideal site for the play’s performance would be in the former home of Zona Gale, now maintained by the Women’s Civic League. “We’re looking forward to being able to videotape the entire play there,” said Davis, who toured the house during a trip to Portage earlier this year and found it beautifully maintained. “When I went to her home, I said it had to be done here,” Davis said. Plans for videotaping the performance in Gale’s home have yet to be finalized. In the meantime, the premiere performance of “Hearts Kindred” will go on in the Community room of the Portage Public Library Saturday and followed by a reception in which Zona Gale’s birthday cake will be cut and shared.