She left Texas for one role. Prague gave her a life beyond the stage

There are moments in Hamlet when Ophelia is described as “sweet Ophelia” or “pretty Ophelia.” When Jessica Boone returned to Prague to play the role for the first time in years, those words carried a darker meaning.

She was undergoing chemotherapy and had lost her hair, something she says had long been tied to her identity as a young woman.

“Who is she if you strip all of that away?” she asks. “What remains when the version of yourself you've always recognized in the mirror disappears?”

Illness may seem like an unsettling place to begin a story about belonging, but for Jessica, it was in the rehearsal room at Prague’s Divadlo Kolowrat that the city began to feel like a place she could call home.

Playing with the National Theatre during that personal chapter also made Prague feel “less like somewhere I had come to work and much more like a place where I was building genuine artistic relationships and lifelong friendships.”

Jessica first arrived in Prague in 2010 to perform in As You Like It, a collaboration between the Prague Shakespeare Festival and a theater company from her hometown of Houston.

The plan was straightforward. “Come for the production, have an adventure, then head home,” she says. But while she was in Prague, casting director Nancy Bishop asked her to audition for a new ABC television series. She got the role.

That project led to another, one introduction led to another, and before she knew it, the temporary apartment became a home, and the short-term project became a life.

Part of the attraction was professional. Coming from the US arts world, where careers are often built project by project, Boone found herself drawn to the tradition of Czech repertory companies and the  “incredible respect for theater as both a craft and a civic conversation.“

For several years, Boone and actor Guy Roberts lived between continents. Guy, who has Czech roots through his grandmother, would become her husband and creative partner.

They had a home in the States and a flat in Prague, but no clear plan about where they would ultimately settle.

Then, in 2012, Jessica was diagnosed with cancer.

She began treatment in Houston but continued part of her care at Prague’s Motol University Hospital, where she says she received “extraordinary care.”

The experience changed her relationship with the city. Forced to slow down, she embraced pohoda, the Czech sense of contentment and being at peace that has no direct English translation.

“It was also the first time since moving here that I wasn't constantly working or travelling,” she says. “I had to learn how to simply be.”

Raised with the American instinct to keep chasing the next achievement, Jessica says the Czech way of life taught her that slowing down was not the same as doing nothing.

After her final scan came back clear, she and Guy committed to Prague.

Jessica and Guy married in Český Krumlov, and the wedding was an event she still describes as one of the happiest weekends of her life.

Soon after, they began talking about creating the kind of theater company they wished existed.

That conversation became the Prague Shakespeare Company, an international ensemble bringing together artists from across Europe, North America, and beyond. The company has staged productions at venues including the Estates Theatre, the Rudolfinum, and Prague Castle.

Away from the stage, Jessica continued building an international screen career, including several seasons on Amazon’s The Wheel of Time.

“It was a really special experience,” she says. “Not just because I was lucky enough to play a character who had the chance to grow over several seasons, but because it was genuinely such a wonderful group of people to work with.”

Jessica has also continued voice acting, which she began as a teenager in Houston and has since grown into a decades-long career, including collaborations with Czech studios on English-language dubbing.

Prague, she says, became the base from which she could pursue all of those careers at once.

Yet the biggest adjustments to life in Prague had little to do with acting.

Growing up in Texas, Boone was accustomed to smiling at strangers and striking up conversations with people she had never met. In Prague, she quickly learned that approach could earn a puzzled look on a tram.

“I realized my American enthusiasm needed a little recalibrating,” she says.

Over time, she came to see that Czech reserve was not the same as coldness. Warmth simply took a different form.

She still finds beauty in small Czech rituals, like entering a waiting room or café and hearing everyone greet one another with a simple Dobrý den.

“It's simply an acknowledgement: I see that you're here. I'm here. We both exist in this space together for this moment.”

After cancer treatment, Jessica was never certain parenthood would be part of her future. Today, both of her sons have been born and raised in Prague.

Raising them bilingually was a deliberate choice. Recently, her older son prepared a school presentation about Texas in English at home before confidently delivering it to his classmates entirely in Czech.

“His teacher and I just looked at each other in amazement,“ she says.

Having grown up in Texas, where she lost family members to gun violence, Boone says she never takes Prague's sense of safety for granted.

She points to the city's parks, family-friendly public spaces, and traditions such as the Czech nature school tradition, škola v přírodě, as examples of a society designed with children in mind.

“It's hard to put into words what it means to watch your children grow up in a place where they have so much freedom to simply be children,“ she says.

Looking back, Jessica says Prague Shakespeare Company ultimately became far more than a theater company.

What began as an effort by two actors to create the artistic home they were searching for grew into an international community of performers, students, collaborators, and friends.

“Somehow, over the years, that little idea grew into a community," she says. "That's the part I'm most proud of.“ 

Drawing on Shakespeare's idea of holding “the mirror up to nature,“ Boone says she hopes the company has helped people from different cultures better understand one another.

“When I look back now, I don't really think about what the company has given my career," she says. “I think about what it's given my life.“ 

These days, her biggest ongoing negotiation is not with the theater industry but with her parents.

“We're working on it,“  she says. “My mother is visiting now, and I'm going to hide her passport.“