Playwright and actor Jeff Bower has never been one to shy away from controversial material. While earning his Master’s of Fine Arts in Theatre from Florida Atlantic University (class of 2003), he received death threats for performing his thesis project: a production of Terence McNally’s “Corpus Christi,” which depicts Jesus as a gay man in modern-day Texas.
“We were at the bottom of the CNN ticker at one point, because [the state] threatened to cut $60 million in funding from FAU,” Bower recalls. “To make my life cool and fun, they put my picture on the front page of the Palm Beach Post, Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald, with ‘Gay Jesus Play Causes Stir.’”
Bower’s offstage activism has also prompted backlash. He was again featured in media coverage when he appeared with his wife—an alumnus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland—at the inaugural March For Our Lives in Los Angeles in 2018. “They put all the MSD alums and their spouses up front,” he says. “There was a guy with a video camera recording all of our faces to threaten and scare us.”
Traumatic events like these—and the mental shrapnel they leave behind—prepared Bower for “The Impossible Task of Today,” his first fully produced full-length play, which sees its world premiere this month at Theatre Lab at FAU. The protagonist is Jack, an online teacher in his early 40s who never leaves his run-down studio apartment. Haunted by a tragedy that unravels with patient precision, Jack suffers from debilitating depression and PTSD, tempered occasionally by the intelligence and mordant wit he exhibits to the few people he allows into his cloistered life.
Bower addresses Jack’s mental health with a theatrical conceit: an amorphous character known as The Dark that serves as a manifestation of Jack’s psyche—sometimes lurking around the periphery of the stage, other times interfering in the action. Along the way, “The Impossible Task” critiques social media’s inflammatory influence while serving as a testament to the power of true friendship and unfiltered communication.
You write authoritatively on what it’s like to live with depression. Have you experienced struggles similar to Jack?
I have experienced PTSD firsthand, and I know a lot of friends that have had it. It’s something that is very prevalent in my life—and I think it’s in everyone’s life. We all have mental health issues going on these days.
And that’s why social media is my target in a lot of ways, especially with this play. I’ve done a lot of research on it, because my PTSD comes through social media, and one of the biggest things is, we’re re-traumatizing ourselves. First you hear about the event, and you see the event, and then the video gets shown, so you see the videos from the horrible event over and over again, and then everyone argues about the event. So you get these three layers of trauma onto your life from this one event, because of social media.
Was it a heavy emotional experience for you to write the play?
Yes. … It became a personal journey for me. I started it before the pandemic and finished it after the pandemic, which changed it a lot. I feel like in a post-pandemic world, this play hits harder because of Jack not leaving his home, and people experienced what that feels like: “I don’t need to shower today; I’m just on a Zoom box.” You can understand Jack’s position a little bit more now.
How do you conceive the actor portraying The Dark?
When I was in 10th grade, I went to Juilliard to see an evening of one-acts that were kabuki-style. And in one of the one-acts, there were two characters having this banal, basic conversation at breakfast, but the subtext was they were in this huge fight. And there were two entities that were their spirits that were fighting the whole time the play was going on. There were poles on the set, and one climbed up the pole, and the other chased it up. That’s partially where I got the inspiration.
For me, it’s a part of Jack. I don’t think it’s evil, I don’t think it’s bad, I just think it’s a part of his being that’s split off and is in control.
“The Impossible Task of Today” also deals with another sort of epidemic that doesn’t surface until more than halfway through the play. Can you discuss that decision?
For me, that’s my writing. I like to unravel the mystery as we go. I like throwing you in the middle of it, and you’ve got to find your way into what’s happening.
Do you see this play being produced in mental health facilities or in therapy groups, as something that can have a healing effect on people?
That would be amazing. We’re talking a lot about mental health, but we’re not taking action, and I hope that this can help spur action amongst people.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “The Impossible Task of Today”
WHERE: Theatre Lab at FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
WHEN: April 5-20
COST: $35-$45
CONTACT: 561/297-6124, fauevents.com
This article is from the April 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
