Arts Alive! podcast: Taking ‘Puffs’ with Jobsite Theater

On this episode of Arts Alive! we welcome Jobsite Theater’s artistic director David M. Jenkins, along with actress Katherine Yacko.

Our friends are here to answer questions about the Jobsite show running through Aug. 3 at the Straz Center (Tampa)’s Jaeb Theatre. It’s the mile-a-minute comedy Puffs, by Matt Cox, and it has a cast of 11 people, most of whom play multiple parts. Yacko herself portrays nearly a dozen characters.

The show’s subtitle gives it away: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic & Magic. That’s right, Puffs is an alternate-universe parody of the Harry Potter franchise, although copyright restrictions (it’s a completely unauthorized but completely legal show, a longtime Off Broadway hit) keep Jenkins and company from saying that name, or using it (or any trademarked Potter buzzwords, for that matter) in advertising or on social media.

Here at Arts Alive!, we have no such restrictions.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter!

Puffs is a story about a group of nerds, dorks and doofi at a college of magic somewhere in the English countryside, the lowest house in an academic caste system that favors handsome and brainy wizards-to-be. Those in the House of Hufflepuff are considered losers and lightweights.

The Puffs endure eccentric professors of magic, major embarrassments, games of sport and games of skill, school bullies, aggro monsters and scary dark forces. Will they prevail? Half the fun, as they say, is getting there. That’s what storytelling is all about.

Click on the arrow to listen to the conversation.