HANNAH CHA ‘25
The Fall Play returned to the Black Box this November with the performance of “Puffs” a comedy written by Matt Cox. All the students who participated put in a significant amount of effort into the production and the audience showed their appreciation during all the performances with eruptions of applause.
The play “Puffs” covers the seven years that Harry Potter spent in Hogwarts. Even though the basic story lines of the play follows the Harry Potter narrative, the whole story of “Puffs” follows the perspective of the Hufflepuffs, one of the houses at Hogwarts that was not described as much in the books. “Puffs” illustrates the Hufflepuff’s students’ adventures and their growth through the years in Hogwarts in a very comedic, heartwarming way.
The most alluring factor of the play for me was definitely be the way the playwright adapted the original story, Harry Potter. The fact that the play was not centered around the characters that we used to consider as the “main characters” allowed the audience to see a completely new interpretation to the same story. As a result, even if you were not familiar with the Harry Potter series, this play created its own distinctive story out of the basic plot. A story of the puffs, which we could never find from any of the Harry Potter books, draws the audience’s interest.
The jokes and comedic plot twists would also played a significant role in this play. Even though there are scenes that deal with death or love, the play itself does not take the scenes extremely seriously. “Puffs” was a comedy and included a lot of funny lines that people can laugh at. It is one of the biggest strengths of this play that pretty much everyone can watch it with a light heart.
Another important factor that made the play was the actors. All the actors in the play put in a lot of effort before the actual production week, therefore succeeding to wholly become the character during the two hours of running time. Also, “Puffs” was a tough play to act out since it is a type of play where one actor takes multiple roles. Despite all the difficulties that the play had, the actors did an excellent job on creating details depending on the personalities of each character.
All in all “Puffs” was a great success, highlighting the great talent and commitment of both cast and crew.