'Puffs' Team Continues to Connect with Audiences Despite COVID-19 Complications
Emilia Ruzicka
With all the restrictions imposed on social gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, live theater events across the US were canceled en masse. This included the performances of Puffs or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic, and Magic, a show that details the affairs of the students of the Hufflepuff house during the Harry Potter series. When the show shut down, actors, technical workers, and so many others were at a loss for how to continue.
“We were trying to figure out what we could possibly do because we have this wonderful group of performers who are doing nothing. We're doing nothing,” said Puffs playwright Matt Cox. “So, Steve [Stout] had the idea of like, ‘oh, what if we do a charity reading of Nineteen-ish Years Later?’ And I was like, ‘oh, amazing’!’”
Nineteen-ish Years Later is a parody of the epilogue of the Harry Potter series. The cast did a reading of it at their last performance of Puffs at the Peoples Improv Theater. Since it was so well-received by fans in a live setting, Cox and his team decided that they would use their platform and incredible fan base to entertain others as well as support charitable causes. All they had to do was figure out how to execute a show online, which came with all kinds of challenges, such as learning how to interact between screens and scheduling rehearsals. In the end, the audience responded with resounding support.
“The first one, we were shocked. Our goal was to raise $1,000 and we'd already raised $2,000 by the time we logged on,” explained Cox. “We raised almost $5,000 that very first reading and about 600 people watched it, which was just unbelievable and insane to us because that's more people than had ever watched one of our shows at one time!”
The $5,000 raised by the reading of Nineteen-ish Years Later was donated to Queens Feeds Hospitals (now Frontline Foods Queens), which buys food from restaurants in Queens, NY to provide to healthcare workers. After the success of the first reading, it was obvious to Cox and his crew that there was not only a demand for this kind of entertainment but also an opportunity to help others and keep the artists busy while they were out of the theater.
“It was kind of immediate like, ‘we should do the other ones and we can pick other charitable causes. Why not use this small amount of power to do some good?’ It was fun and it gave us something to do. As they went on, it was a boon—something to just focus on for a bit,” said Cox.
Since that first reading, the cast and crew of Puffs have done two additional Parody for Charity events, a reading of Dude, Where's My Fantastic Beast?, a parody of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and one of Puf3s: Eventfulness Maximus, another Harry Potter -related parody. Each reading raised money for a different cause.
“The second one, since we did Dude, Where's My Fantastic Beast?, which deals with beasts and animals, Madeleine Bundy had the idea of giving to different New York animal shelters and so we gave a lot to the New York Humane Society, which was the main recipient of the donation,” Cox explained. “For Puf3s: Eventfulness Maximus, we gave to the Ali Forney Center, which is an organization that we've worked within the past. Especially right now, they particularly needed help.”
Combined, the three events raised more than $10,000 for the chosen charities, spreading supportiveness and joy during a time when bad news is so rampant. Though this set of Parody for Charity events is over, Cox and the cast and crew of Puffs are still making online content to keep their fan base entertained. Kapow-i Gogo is the first play Cox ever wrote and was performed as a three-part saga with a runtime of about four and a half hours in 2015. It’s unconventional but explores many themes that audiences seek.
Says Cox: “It's sort of a loving homage to a lot of the things that I loved from the 90s, like Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon and Star Wars. It's like every sort of thing out there in the nerd stratosphere crammed together in one Saturday-morning-cartoon, action-packed, marathon play. The idea is as the show goes from part to part, the show ages up. It starts as a Y7 children's cartoon, and then it moves into more of a TV-14 show for moody teens, and then it gets into a dark and gritty adult show. I've always loved it. It's very close to my heart, just like all of the things that inspired it.”
Cox has rewritten Kapow-i Gogo in two parts, with each act serving as another “aging up” transition. He has been recording it with the help of the Puffs team and distributing the recording via social media. Though Kapow-i Gogo was supposed to take the stage again this fall, Cox sees this less as a delay and more as extra time to hone the project.
“We sort of used this as an opportunity to put [Kapow-i Gogo] out there, but also to be workshopping it because I like to build a thing on its feet. I like to write to actors and what actors like to do. This is a way to keep developing it and throw in some other fun things. We're always looking for fun things to do right now.”