Comedy Comes to Cardigan’s Stage

The Cardigan Mountain Players are busy rehearsing for their fall play, A Simple Task, written by Alan Haehnel, an English teacher at nearby Hanover High School. This darkly humorous, absurdist play will bring plenty of laughs when the boys take to the stage next month.

The premise of A Simple Task is anything but simple. The main character, Empie, is given a seemingly easy assignment at his new job: retrieve a box of merchandise for his boss. Things quickly become complicated for Empie when the box is blocked by a parade of confusing characters, the Boss keeps changing identities, and Empie’s whole career starts to feel absurd.

“The boys have had a great time deciphering the motives behind these characters and learning how ridiculous life and language can get,” said Jeff Good, Cardigan’s theater arts teacher and director of the production. “Because we had so many students come out for this year's fall play, we cast several understudies; we owe a great debt to our understudies who have kept us on schedule."

• Empie - Diego Escalante (understudies: Jake Marcum, Zhimin “Jimmy” Li, Zheng “Justin” Gong, Carter Davis, Mateo Escalante)
• Boss 1 - Seongheon “Harold” Kim (understudy: Kolapat “Pi” Mongkhonvanit)
• Boss 2 - Qiangang “Sam” Wang (understudy: Shijia “Mac” Wang)
• Boss 3 - Nate Johnson (understudy: Bochen “Victor” Zhu)
• Boss 4 - Xufei “Figo” Wang (understudy: Hanzhe “Jason” Jiang)
• Boss 5 - Beau Brissette (understudy: Jiayu “Kevin” Gu)
• Boss 6 - Tom Li (understudy: Ki “Jerry” Zhang)
• Teacher 1 - Jack Marshard (understudy: Shijia “Mac” Wang)
• Teacher 2 - Gabe Brondel (understudy: Bryce Terry)
• Ralph - Michael Brannan (understudy: Chenqi “Lucas” Ding)
• Connie - Yoon-gi “Mike” Lee (understudy: Bill Ke)
• Guard 1 - Kaiyi “Kenny” Chen (understudy: Junkai “Tiger” Yang)
• Guard 2 - Miles Kim (understudy: Peiqi “Randy” Xiao)
• Guard 3 - Dylan Biggs (understudy: Matt Chow)
• Pearl - Franklin Chow (understudy: Jiachi “Sean” Wang)
• Lover - Estyn Elkouh (understudy: Andrew Carratu)
• Loralee - Jake Marcum (understudy: Andrew Carratu)