“Boca” is on stage at Florida Rep for just a few more shows. Playwright Jessica Provenz was in the audience on Sunday to see the play she wrote four years ago. That’s primarily because she and Director Chris Clavelli made some changes to make the laugh-out-loud comedy even funnier.
“A lot of artists have trouble putting down the paintbrush,” Provenz said, laughing. “I wrote the play in the pandemic. It was a commission. I had three months to write it, and the first production was in a tent, outside, socially distanced, masks. There were trains going by; car alarms. One of the actors was so funny. He said, ‘The only people who should ever perform in a tent are pachyderms.’”
It wasn’t the most ideal place to workshop a new comedy.
“I was then able to do it again, in Florida, in Miami at Gable Stage, and actually had to go on because an actor got COVID,” Provenz said.
Although the play is now in its sixth production, Provenz felt confident that she could wring even more laughs out of the play, which is about members of a gated community who are acting like they’re in junior high all over again.
“Chris Cavelli, the director, and I have been in conversation and I said, ‘Hey, what’s not working? I’m happy to tweak something,’ Provenz explained. “And he had a moment that he thought about, and that actually birthed this whole new storyline for the play that was not in there, which is about crows.”
Provenz had just read a study finding that crows hold a grudge. If they have an unpleasant experience with someone, they’ll remember the transgressor, act aggressively toward them and teach their offspring to exact revenge against the perpetrator, as well.
“In the article, it said this can go on for 17 years, where you can’t leave your house without a crow coming after you,” Provenz said. “So, I thought that was great and really funny and I’m putting it in the play. So this is the first time I’ve seen the crows.”
There are some other enhancements too.
“Playwriting is a living thing and I get to see how it evolves,” Provenz said.
There’s still time for you, too, to see Provenz’s latest version. “Boca’ is on stage through Sunday, March 2nd in the historic Arcade Theatre at Florida Repertory Theatre.
MORE INFORMATION:
“Boca” is a story of friends and neighbors who live in a gated community in Boca Raton. “It starts to feel a little like junior high after a while. They’re competitive, they’re petty, they’re challenging each other, and they’re also checking off all the things on their bucket lists, whether it’s breaking out of the area and going cross country or doing some of the things they never got to do,” Provenz summarized.
Provenz said that she drew inspiration for the characters and story from a colleague at Barrington Stage in the Berkshires who is actually from Fort Myers.
“His father was 94,” Provenz explained. “His mother had passed away, and he was like the catch of the county. Every woman was coming over with their lasagnas and their pot roasts, trying to woo his aging, nearly senile father. I thought, that’s a premise right there.”
She used that premise in a piece she entered in a 10-minute New Play Festival that Barrington was conducting “about a woman who was really determined to get her neighbor next door now that he was single."
That play went over so well that Provenz was commissioned to write an evening of short plays for senior actors.”
She decided to set one of those plays in Boca.
Provenz loved the idea of gated communities, where residents are forced to confront their neighbors because their surroundings are so insular and so many activities revolve around the clubhouse.
“My aunt is from Delray, and I’ve spent time on the golf course and the tennis courts and the pickleball courts, and I loved the clubhouse, where you show up and you know everybody, and you don’t want to sit with those people, but you do like these other people, and you’ve been left out of that card game," said Provenz. "I thought that gave me a really great playground to explore. I also thought that as you age, there’s suddenly a lot of freedom. You might have resources and money to try things, but there’s also the physical challenges, and also, it feels a lot like a junior high class.”
As Director of Development for Barrington Stage, Provenz has also forged numerous friendships with Barrington’s Florida-based patrons. Each winter, she pays them a visit for fundraising purposes. “We go from gated community to gated community,” she said. “I also live in what’s essentially a retirement community and all of my friends are 80-plus. So these are my people. Writing a play about former New Yorkers who’d moved to Florida was like a world that I really knew.”
Provenz noted that her writing is informed by her incorrigible optimism.
“I try to find the humor in lots of things that I do,” she said.
For example, two weeks prior to her trip to Florida Rep, she fractured her leg in three places skiing at Killington. “In the theater, you break your leg for good luck,” she said wryly. “I’ve taken it way too far. But I’m like a really good person to break their leg because it just gives me the opportunity to sit down, write another play and make the best of it. So I look for the humor. I look for the laughs. I look for the positive because life is short and you gotta take it one step at a time or, in my case, one hop a time right now. The world is full of inspiration.”
“Boca” provides more than big laughs. It reminds us that we’re all neighbors, part of a community “and although you might be on different sides of an opinion or issue, in the end, we’re all in this together.”
Provenz also hopes her comedy will serve as a clarion call to folks to not take themselves or life too seriously.
She knows of what she speaks. Provenz wrote the script while she was undergoing cancer treatments, incorporating the laughs and situational comedy into her medical regimen.
Chris Clavelli directs a veteran cast consisting of Viki Boyle (Susan/Deann), Susan Cella (Janet/Iris), Susan J. Jacks (Louise/Elaine), William McNulty (Mo/Bruce) and Bruce Sabath (Marty/Robbie/Stan).
In all, the play consists of 12 short comedic vignettes. Each runs between three and 15 minutes. All 12 are unified by a common theme: people who come together as a community.
The study of crows Provenz mentioned was conducted by Professor John Marzluff, who was researching the birds’ remarkable memory. Using a unique "demon" mask, researchers trapped and released crows, discovering that the birds remembered the negative experience for up to 17 years. The New York Times reported on the study in October 2024.
In addition to “Boca,” Provenz’s playwriting credits include “A Wake on Chappaquiddick” (Cape Cod Theatre Project, New Georges, Irish Rep), “True Art” (Pioneer Theatre, Directors Company), “Andromeda” (Barrow Group, Berkshire Playwrights Lab) and “Better Than Chocolate” (Juilliard). She has been a regular contributor to Berkshire Magazine. For New York Magazine, she wrote a feature about serving as Anthony Weiner’s Policy Director.
A two-time recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy Award for Emerging Playwrights, Jessica received a B.S. from Northwestern University and was artist-in-residence at The Juilliard School.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.