Witty wizards
The College of Central Florida stages a spooky-season satire.
Sarah Dowlah as Wayna Hopkins rehearses a scene from “Puffs” with other cast members at the College of Central Florida in Ocala, Fla. on Monday, 14, 2024. “Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic” will be presented live on stage by the CF Theatre Oct. 24-27, 2024. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2024.
What happens when you condense seven years of stories of the students at a school of sorcery into 90 minutes? Pure magic—with the nonstop laughs that come from satirizing one of the most famous young adult fiction and film franchises.
The College of Central Florida’s production of “Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic” features a cast of 29 students playing young wizards who battle dark forces, encounter enchanted creatures and find plenty of mayhem and mischief. But this farcical take on the wizarding world, directed by CF Assistant Professor of Theatre Nonalee Davis, is told from the point of the view of the lesser-known Puffs.
“The Puffs are basically everything else that you would expect out of anybody who wasn’t sorted into the Smarts, the Braves and the Snakes,” explained Geovanni Jiminez, who plays lead character Oliver Rivers, a young wizard studying in the vast, magical castle. “The Puffs are all sweet; they’re all really nice. They all have really loving hearts, and they would die for each other. They have a very tough bond and at the end of the day, they’re all united.”
Unlike the more famous fearless wizards who fight the dark lord and forces of evil, members of the Puffs house, whose mascot is the badger, identify as “fun, nice, happy people” and aspire to simply not be last in the all-important House Cup challenge.
“Third or nothing! Third or nothing!” is the rallying cry from the Puffs’ cozy, kitchen-adjacent basement common room, where they congregate for a pep talk led by Cedric, played by Xavier Rosado. Sporting a yellow-and-black striped British soccer scarf, he cautions new students that “people will make jokes about you, or throw food at you, or they might curse you.” And, in this wizarding world, a curse—chanted with a point of the magic wand—can inflict effects from the merely annoying to bizarre to seriously harmful, so Cedric starts his speech to new students with a “list of curses you can expect to be hit by in the next couple weeks.”
Spells, potions and magical creatures figure prominently in the fast-paced farce, but, according to Sarah Dowlah, who plays lead character Wayna Hopkins, the hilarious hijinks are all seen through the relatable lens of young adults “figuring everything out.”
“She’s failing, but she’s also succeeding. She’s figuring herself out as she goes,” Dowlah said of her character. “It’s a roller coaster. A lot of it is based around our awkward teenage years, so I think people are going to be able to be like, ‘Oh, I was in that position once.’ I want the audience to have fun and hopefully relate with us a little bit.”
The third character in the lead trio of spell-casting students is Megan Jones, played by Ava Lamb, whose goth look reflects the angsty 1990s teen who is angry at the world.
“She doesn’t want to be in the Puffs,” Lamb said of her character, who, like all wizarding students, are sorted into a house by a magical hat. “She’s just so different from everyone else. She goes against what is expected of her family; she doesn’t want to be what everyone thinks she’s going to be.” The reactive comedy of her character, Lamb said, is mirroring the audience’s reactions to “the ridiculousness.”
The cast calls the show “hilarious.”
“There’s almost never a scene where you’re not going to laugh,” Jiminez said. “It’s very fast paced; there’s not a moment that you can miss. The audience is going to love how witty it is.”
The production features an enormous, elaborate set designed and built by CF Theatre Manager Mario Cieri, complete with rotating staircases, hidden doors and a potions lab where bizarre brews boil and bubble. Costumes, designed by Abigail Stallings, CF assistant professor of digital media, evoke “classical uniforms, really recognizable, with an added fun twist.”
“I think one of the most fun things about this was finding ways to have little moments where they can have some style as well as showing personality,” Stallings said, explaining that as the characters age, costume changes reflect finding their own style in an homage to the 1990s.
Theatergoers are encouraged to wear their house colors, wizarding robes and hats, and bring magic wands.
“Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic” is live on stage Oct. 24-27 at the College of Central Florida Dassance Fine Arts Center, 3001 SW College Road, Ocala. For tickets, visit cf.universitytickets.com or call (352) 873-5810.
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