After a sold-out run at the People’s Improv Theater earlier this year, “Puffs, or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic & Magic” has been enjoying a similarly successful Off-Broadway expansion at the Elektra Theatre. A cheeky and endearing riff on “Harry Potter” spotlighting the oft-overlooked Hufflepuffs, the laugh-out-loud comedy gives voice to those watching Potter’s feats from the sidelines while still spinning its own magic. Backstage spoke with star and producer Stephen Stout about tackling the iconic wizarding franchise, his secret to stage success, and how he perfected his Alan Rickman impression.
On ‘Puffs’ and rooting for the underdog.
“The thing that really struck me at the core of what [playwright] Matt [Cox’s] idea was, ‘What’s it like to be the person who sits in class next to Mark Zuckerberg?’ Ultimately, you don’t get to become Mark Zuckerberg—you’re forever in his shadow. (And that’s sort of what most of us are in life.) So for me, the perspective shift was, how do you show the bravery and the wonderfulness and the charm of the average while still letting it be average? That as a comedic premise was really intriguing for me. We’ve all been rejected from asking somebody out or have just not been able to get a concept down in our heads. There’s a certain humanity to failure, or not quite grasping your goals, or feeling humble or small in comparison.”
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On impersonating Alan Rickman.
“I approach it by living with the actual material to the extent that I could start to see quirks in it. Weirdly, Mr. Rickman’s voice sits easier within my own, so finding the tonality and that amazing rhythm that he has and, honestly, not trying to mock it, but trying to be as worshipful and respectful and honoring of what that was. Whereas with, say, Michael Gambon, whose voice did not sit exactly on my own, it’s finding both the pop cultural assumption of what the interpretation of that character was, but then also trying to find these weird little rumbles that he has in certain moments. Basically, it’s about focusing in on six or seven rhythms, vocal ticks, or common assumptions about what their performance was, and then putting that in a little bowl, mixing it around, and hopefully coming up with something original and enjoyable. It’s a lot of obsessing over three minutes of dialogue.”
On moving uptown.
“It’s definitely exciting to be in the belly of the beast in midtown after a career mostly doing dark, new plays downtown. It’s different when it’s not just a bunch of people who are in the know and found this project or this show and then they’re coming to check it out at the comedy theater downtown or an Off-Off-Broadway space. There are people [coming to ‘Puffs’] who—it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re part of people’s travel plans!’ There’s something exciting and terrifying of living up to what that expectation is.”
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On succeeding as a stage actor in New York City.
“The thing that I have found is that the most reward comes out of stuff that you end up creating yourself. Epecially as an actor, you have other people who will always define you. In my case, it’s going to an audition and there being another 12 5-foot 7(ish)-inch young white gentlemen with big eyebrows. It’s very easy to feel like you’re in your little box. So creating work with friends and kind of providing yourself the opportunity is, I think, the most important thing. It also expands the amount of stuff you know about the business. ‘Puffs’ is also the culmination of 10 years of working Off-Off-Broadway on new plays, figuring out how to forge relationships with press and marketing opportunities with no money, performing for no audiences, and learning how you grow and develop an audience. All of these kind of nitty-gritty pain-in-the-ass things that if you have a like-minded group of people who are also willing to put in the elbow grease and drive themselves crazy over the details of a project, then you’ve really struck gold. This business isn’t pitying, and it’s a lot more fun to do it with a community of like-minded fun people.”
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