Puffs leaves audience in tears of laughter on opening night

The Puffs cast had audience members in tears on opening night on Friday

The UB Department of Theater and Dance hosted their opening night of “Puffs Or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic” on Friday night in the Katharine Cornell Theater.

A parody of the Harry Potter franchise, “Puffs” follows a new trio of characters; Oliver Rivers (Alex Louis). a math whiz who does not have access to math class, Megan Jones (Wisteria Jones), a girl who resents her status as a “puff,” and Wayne Hopkins (Aidan Sumrall) a boy who wants to become the hero that Harry Potter eventually becomes.

From start to finish, the show pokes fun at the entirety of the Harry Potter series. The original characters become goofy caricatures of themselves, plot-holes become gaping chasms, and Harry Potter is made to seem like the bad guy in many ways. Even voldemort was turned into a flamboyant pilates enthusiast.

On top of constant callbacks to the original series, Puffs introduces us to a new cast of characters intended to be from the Hufflepuff house, the most overlooked house in the series. In Puffs this group is painted as severely stupid, obnoxious, and strange.

This new focus makes for comedic gold. The audience was howling with laughter throughout most of the show. Most notably during a segment where Tobias Pfluke improvised an entire segment as Zach Smith where he ran around stage telling the story of how he traveled back in time to “hook up” with another character's mom, thus becoming his father.

“Each night we never knew what Tobias was going to do,” said Alex Novak, who portrayed Ernie Mac, Seamus, A Fat Friar, and Bippy. “The last night he went into a rant about Madonna where her head ended up exploding.”

Two Puffs engage in drunken shenanigans

Novak also had a standout moment as Bippy, a character which was introduced late into the second half of the show and abruptly killed, prompting him to scream in agony while rolling around on the floor for many minutes.

“I had tears streaming down my face with laugh,” said Alexandra Saccone. “Every time I thought it was over he would keep going.”

Puffs was entirely student directed, and Novak said director Moriah Armstrong did not have a large budget to work with.

“They didn’t have a lot of money to use on props, but she actually built the entire dragon with paper mache and I think it came out super good,” said Novak.

Beginning on the first day of classes, August 28, the cast had one month to prepare the entire show before opening night. They rehearsed nearly every single week night in the lead-up and also had a showing on Saturday.

There was also an invite only dress rehearsal on Thursday.

“I’m still so surprised at what they did in such little time,” said Lisa Saccone. “It was honestly one of my favorite experiences I’ve had in a theater. I was super impressed with what they came up with.”

Many of the cast members expressed love for their fellow actors and indicated it was a positive experience for all involved.

“Mariah was so awesome as a director and I loved everybody. I’m honestly very very sad it’s over. I’m hoping a lot of the cast returns for future performances,” said Novak. “All of the rehearsals were so much fun and a lot of the time we would hang out afterwards. It never felt like work because of everyone here.”