In early November, the production Puffs was performed by MCAA’s advanced drama class. The play is about a franchise that shall not be named (starting with Harry…) giving the narrative of the ‘Puffs’ over seven increasingly eventful years at a certain school of magic and magic (to quote the full title). The production came with lots of laughs, surprises, and a slight level of raunchiness that one might not expect from a typical high school play. If you didn’t attend one of the showings, you definitely missed out.

On that note, our team decided to interview the cast, and are currently in recovery. Our brave journalists uncovered many shocking details– these were quite easy to obtain, given we were in a classroom full of some of the loudest and most impulsive kids at our school. It is, after all, drama.

We learned about the eventful experience Puffs was backstage. If you thought the play itself was chaotic, wait until you find out what the cast had to say about their experiences. They told us about inside jokes, their experiences with Mr. Land, an unfortunate bathroom incident, and a variety of other hysterical anecdotes.

Even if you didn’t have the pleasure of seeing Puffs, their stories are very entertaining nonetheless.

First, we had to ask the cast if it was difficult to keep a straight face during the more comedic scenes. There was, of course, an uproar when we asked this question. Everyone began talking at once in indistinguishable outbursts as if they were a gaggle of velociraptors (gaggle isn’t the correct term, but it feels appropriate in this instance). Garrett Granger, who played a collection of characters, most notably Mr. Voldi, “bit [his] lip and said [his lines] really aggressively to not laugh”. Martha Miethe (who played Hannah and others) having what Salma Alfaqeeh (who played Megan Jones) referred to as “a bodacious badonkadonk” caused her to “never once [hold] it together” during her scene as Fat Friar. This scene was where Martha had a large butt in her costume (which was a stuffed socking) for comedic effect.

Anton Dresler, a science instructor at MCAA, requested a question for us to ask the cast. His question was as follows; “Who were you most excited to see in the audience and why was it Dresler?”. Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Dresler, but the responses were not in your favor. Salma replied with “everyone except for Dresler,” and Garrett said he “didn’t even notice Dresler was there”. Danielle Gatlin, who played Susie Bones and others, said she was “excited to see Fridrich’s reaction because of how big of a fan [of what shall not be named] he is”. To add on to that, Asher Perla (who played Oliver Rivers) noted that he was “more nervous about Fridrich and Tejada bringing their little kids”. Martha mentioned her mom coming and her favorite scene being when “Oliver and Wayne both had a b*ner”, to which Steven Schwartz (who played Wayne Hopkins) said “it’s professionally called an er*ction”. Alec Magiera (who played Second Headmaster and others) responded with “that’s worse”. He wasn’t wrong.

We also asked the cast what their favorite prop was. We got some… interesting stories from that. Malia Begley, who played Xzavia Jones and others, said their favorite was “the plant that [they] used for professor sprouty. [They] wanted to turn it on on the last show so badly because when you turn it on it says ‘I am a plant’”. Rowan Gilstrap’s (who played Harry and others) favorite prop was his tiara. Steven noted that his favorite was “either the dog or the beer bottles” to which Xzalia said “Steven licked the bottle [even though he knew they] drank it before too”. Mr. DeMeritt exclaimed that, “IT WAS NOT REAL BEER”.

Martha’s favorite was “Victor’s shark head” although Mr. DeMeritt stated it smelled “like cancer”. Asher told us that his favorite were the gummy worms that were used during his vomiting scene, but that he made an unfortunate mistake. “For dress rehearsals I was not aware that I was not supposed to chew them, DeMeritt didn't tell me, so I took a lot and I stuck them in my mouth and chewed them a lot because it looked way better…it looked like actual vomit,” (Asher Perla). After, Mr. DeMeritt said that he “liked making props” and added that he was “not like other directors”. What a quirky guy.

We asked the cast for other funny stories regarding Puffs. Here are some of the most interesting quotes we received:

“Alec burped while his mic was on and it blew out the mic and echoed,” -Naomi Freeman (who played Blondo Malfoy and others).

For context on this next one, Martha went into the bathroom with her mic still on.

“Luckily the mic was not on while I actually went to the bathroom, it was just on while talking to Xzalia in there”. Mr. DeMeritt boasted about his intuition as he had the mic turned off before the inevitable disaster could’ve occured, and self-described himself as a “wonderful director”. Martha said that “they turned it back on while I was washing my hands and everyone thought I was flushing the toilet”.

When asked about their favorite character, the conversation took quite the turn. Asher stated that his was “Mr. Land, not because he was the headmaster but because Mr. Land was amazing… backstage…” and was promptly interrupted with Danielle exclaiming, “HE JUST STOOD THERE!”. Malia said that “at first [they] thought he was a statue” and Cyrus Sorenson (who played J. Finch and others) “got scared of him like five times”. Asher said it “looked like he was getting through his charging port”. Salma concluded the discussion with “Mr. Land heard some crap”.

This interview may have lasted only fifty minutes (only…), but it seemed as if the Advanced Drama class took it as a challenge to see how many words they could all fit into the time frame. They said so much that only a smaller percentage was condensed into our article. If you would like to hear more of what they said to each question, here is the link to the full in-person transcribed notes/quotes;

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VMYqXHglPdduOY0jbOg57ZOM7RI9GyWiSFY7cU_DLIs/edit?usp=sharing

Now that you have absorbed the wonderfully absurd dynamics and voiced stories/opinions within our Advanced Drama class, we would like to thank the Puffs cast and Mr. DeMeritt for allowing us to do this. We also would like to thank our interviewers and transcribers for keeping up with their chaos.

We hope finding out all of these things we experienced while interviewing the cast was, at the very least, entertaining. On that note, we’d like to lastly thank you for reading!

Feel free to reach out to either Honor Giardini (25hgia617@mjusd.k12.ca.us) or Benjamin Oliver (25boli610@mjusd.k12.ca.us) for any feedback, suggestions, or if you’d like us to do another one of these in the future for any of the upcoming productions.