By DAVID SVIEN

Special to the News-Times

Four years later, the magic is coming to the stage.

After the pandemic threw a wrench into things, the Coupeville High School Theater Department has regrouped to revive its production of “Puffs,” also known as “Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic.”

The play, written by Matt Cox, hits the high school stage May 9-11, with performances at 7 p.m.

Tickets are $10 for adults, $7 for students, and $5 for students with ASB.

“Puffs” is “a very familiar story about finding out you are a wizard and being swept away to a school of magic,” said CHS drama instructor Stefanie Ask.

“But our show isn’t about that character,” she said. “Our show is about Hufflepuffs, or Puffs, and being the unassuming lovable underdog we all find ourselves to be at one time or another.”

Ask and her students were deep in the rehearsal process in March 2020, when COVID arrived to throw things asunder.

“When the world paused, so did our heartfelt little play,” she said.

“It was heartbreaking to realize that the show we thought we sat aside for a few weeks of shutdown was not going to come to fruition at all for that wonderful cast of humans,” she said.

“Together we mourned (on GoogleMeets) for the theater experience that we should have had together as Puffs.”

Cut to four years later and Ask and a new group have revived the play. They are dedicating it to those who were part of the original cast and crew.

“An entirely new combination of wonderful humans assorted into a cast, and we are finally bringing our sweet, funny, little underdog story to the stage for an audience,” she said.

“We hope they’ll be out there in the audience (or elsewhere on their own heroic adventures) hearing our ‘Third or Nothing!’ cheer and feeling the bond they share with today’s cast.”