Imagine being eleven years old again. You’re minding your own business playing a video game in your living room when all of a sudden, a huge white owl drops a letter on your shoulder. The letter is old and dusty, but it tells you that you’re a wizard and it's time to go to school in England. After having a bad experience with the train station, you get shipped off to school where you will spend the next seven years.
Welcome to the opening act of CHS Drama clubs’ fall play entitled: Puffs, a “Harry Potter Parody” told from the perspective of the self-proclaimed “worst house”, the Hufflepuffs. The show follows the life of a very special orphaned boy. No, not the one with the scar and glasses, a different one. His name is Wayne Hopkins and after getting sorted into the Puffs, the audience watches him and his friends live through almost all the Harry Potter events, everything from the Basilisk from book two to the Tri-wizard tournament in book four and ending with the Battle of Hogwarts. Throughout the play, new characters are introduced, such as Megan Jones, and old ones are reimagined to avoid copyright, like Ron Mop (played by Ed Sheeran).
The process for getting this play off the ground began the selection of the piece by director Mr. Dwayne Allen. “I was looking for something that was new and, I don’t want to say ‘edgy’, but you know, hip, something contemporary, and yet something fun. Puffs kinda fit all that, checked the boxes. The title caught my attention too and when I looked it up online and watched a couple clips of it, it really hooked me,” said Allen.
The next step took place in September on the 19th-20th and the 26th-27th when the potential actors auditioned for their roles.
After the auditions, the actors waited in anticipation to see which part they would be cast in. A few weeks later all auditionees were informed. The cast list was as follows: Paige Runions (12) as the Narrator, Reese Mathers (12) as Oliver Rivers, Coal Fiano (11) as Wayne Hopkins, Mia Schons (11) as Megan Jones, Tristan Wetzel (10) as Cedric/Mr. Voldy, Cole Ennis (12) as Harry Potter/others, Danielle Totman (12) as J. Finch Fletchly/others, Georgia Holm (10) as Leanne/others, Kate Smith (10) as Sally Perks/others, Ella Ising (9) as Hannah/others, Leo Durst (9) as Susie Bones/others, and Ashton Weston (11) as Ernie Mac/others.
With their roles assigned, all the actors quickly began memorizing their lines. Some actors had only one role, like Mathers, but still had a plethora of lines. Others, like Ising, played multiple different characters; while having less lines, they had many quick costume changes.
“I would try to change the mannerisms of the characters and use props that set them apart, most of the time I would wear mostly the same stuff, try to minimalize the amount of stuff I needed to change. I would also make sure my props and costume for quick changes were placed where they needed to be beforehand,” said Ising.
The first play practice took place on October 7th on the Cascade stage. From this point on, there were rehearsals every weekday from 3 to 5pm. Unfortunately, there was a rough start to the practices. Many cast members had prior obligations including soccer, cross country, college classes, and dance classes. This caused a decent amount of cast members to miss rehearsals. Director Mr. Allen was determined to keep moving forward despite the many difficulties.
“The biggest challenge with this play was trying to get all these people in the same place at the same time; that was a struggle,” explained Mr. Allen.
While the cast was getting their ‘act’ together (pun very much intended), behind the scenes the stage crew was having their own troubles. Puffs was a complicated play with many different props, costumes, and set changes. The backstage crew was doing their best to get everything together before tech week. The crew consisted of Rhonan Allen (12), Anna “Jack” Reichlin (12), Kieran Wong (12), Napiqua Gibbs (12), Quinn MacPhee (9), Phaedra Myers (9), Isis Willard (10), and Grace Schumacher (9). Rhonan Allen had the role of Stage Manager and oversaw getting props in place, set construction, and running curtain cues backstage, along with sorting out any stage issues.
“One of the biggest things I can think of is dealing with props, where they need to be onstage, making sure everything onstage is going as it needs to be, curtain needs to be opened, making sure our big props, like the giant snake, is ready in place, stuff like that. Also making sure everyone is doing what they need to be, having actors make sure they’re focused on being in their spots and having stage crew be ready to bring props on or off,” said Allen.
Meanwhile, the tech crew was working on sound, lighting, and music cues in the tech booth. The operators of these effects were Soren Ising (11), Cosimo Terranella (10), and Cadigan Adams (9). Having never gone through the full play with lights and sound, the tech crew worked hard to get the cues down.
Finally on November 14th the curtain opened at 7:05pm to the first scene of Puffs. It went amazing despite the worries of cast and crew alike. Minus a few missed cues and late entrances, everyone was happy with the performance.
The second night was considered by crew members to be the best of all three: there with no flukes. It was also the night with the biggest showing of audience members.
On the third and final performance night, November 16th, the director acknowledged all graduating Drama club seniors. With the number of seniors in the production, there was only a short speech for the group. One exciting moment for the cast and crew that night was when CHS alumni Breanna Loomis visited the performance the third night and brought a smile to everyone’s faces who worked with her while she was a student. “The mic timing could have been improved, but I really enjoyed Mia [Schons] character, she was my favorite part of the show,” recalled Loomis.
Senior Reese Mathers had never performed onstage before, but she thoroughly enjoyed it. “I had a lot of fun. I thought I would be more nervous about opening night, but I was just really excited to be able to show off all the hard work and time I put into this. I was more nervous in the beginning, because I wasn't really sure that I could convey the character very well, but it ended up being a lot of fun and I got to know a lot of my fellow actors better. I would absolutely do it again if I was given another opportunity, but I would try to take it less seriously this time, because I was a little too stressed-out during tech week, but in the end I'm just in it for the fun and the companionship,” Mathers explained.
In the end, the CHS Drama club raised $1,200 in donations to the club which will go to future productions. The PTSA was also selling concessions during intermissions all three performance nights and donated half their funds to the Drama club.
Allen hopes the audience gained a couple things from the performance: “One, walking away with a laugh, walking out going ‘that was a fun show’, but there’s a couple of hidden messages. One message is meeting kids with where they’re at. All kids are different and every kid is going to need something different, we need to meet the kids where they’re at, not try to cookie cutter them, but the other message which is exemplified by Wayne and that is:
You may not feel like you are the main character in your show but to someone else you are the main character, you are important, so when you feel like you are not important, just keep that in mind.”
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