Feeding the Soul, page 2
Driving
through the tiny hamlet of Marshall, then past Waterloo’s Trek bicycle
headquarters, I arrived at the town’s main intersection, then took a right onto
Monroe. One block down I saw the old stone movie house, and the name Mode
Theatre on the marquee. Why is the Age of Enlightenment happening in Waterloo,
Wisconsin, I wondered? Later, I asked Jinx this question. She theorized about
the geographical coincidence of the Mode being situated in America’s heartland,
and the impact it has had upon awakening the consciousness of so many.
“I live in a town whose existence for the past 60 years
has been of serial complacency,” she said. “Yet we are pulling in half the
households. I like to think that the theater has helped generate a eureka, an
awareness, in this tiny town in the midst of the cornfields. It has created a
sense of urgency and thrust, compelling people to react. You wouldn’t feel that
same sort of driving need to connect if we were doing this in New York or
Chicago. In fact,” she goes on, “ I think the Mode has survived because it
could only happen here.”
I would later learn Jinx took enormous risks to find
that out. Theater can be a powerful vehicle when it combines thoughtful,
reflective dialogue and is able to connect with the audience on a number of
levels. But when you’re selling emotion, you’re also in the business of taking
risks. 
When the Mode opened five years ago, Jinx trusted the
integrity of her work, but was also cognizant of the fact that her sensitive
portrayals of interesting, albeit, often disturbing characters, including the
abused and abusive, could result in difficult experiences for her audience. The
idea was to allow people to experience a sense of freedom and intimacy at the
same time. Atmosphere was important—so she and Andy transformed a decrepit old
movie theater into a splendid performance space. “I knew that we couldn’t do
what we needed to with ‘the fourth wall’ up,” she says, “so we devised a salon
sort of space where we could be heard by real people, not by elitists or
pseudo-intellectuals.”