If you’re a Mastodon completionist, you may have already read, I guess, some of this story, but let me give you a fuller picture of a great rehearsal I had.

Your Daily Lex

Sunday, I had rehearsal for Jagged Little Pill.

Originally it was going to be in the early afternoon, but it got moved to the evening because that theater had another show that was closing that day.

And in fact, when I got to the rehearsal, the parking lot was full to the brim because people were still at the show, which had not quite ended.

It literally ended as I was walking in.

We did our rehearsal in another room while they took down their set.

And, you know, as I’ve said, I have a Princess track in the show, so sometimes in rehearsal it’s not making an incredibly use of my time, but it’s okay.

I was used for— it was a three-hour rehearsal.

I was used for a while and then had like 90 minutes of doing nothing, and then I was used again.

And we were doing a scene where my wife MJ and I in the show are coming back from a therapy appointment, a couple’s therapy appointment, and we are fighting.

We see our daughter’s friend leaving our house.

That friend tells us some shocking news about our daughter.

We then confront our daughter, and when the daughter storms out of the house with a bag, in fact, as if she’s running away, my wife and I have a fight.

So we’re rehearsing.

There’s, you know, some decent moving parts in this scene because we have to go upstairs and, you know, the set is actually only one floor, so it’s the mapping out of how are we going to hint to the audience that that’s what’s happening.

Like, here we are entering the house and the daughter’s upstairs.

Here’s the friend leaving downstairs.

Here’s us moving from the downstairs to the upstairs to confront the daughter.

And we keep on rerunning various parts of that as we work on it.

Our daughter is actually in bed with a boy at the start of this scene, and that boy has this line where he is surprised, and he was having some trouble with the delivery and it was actually quite funny.

Good-natured ribbing was occurring.

But, you know, all these different pieces are being running.

We have to come back in a pretty big fight, and then be chill when we’re talking to our daughter’s friend.

So there’s a lot of these pieces, right?

So we’re running it, as you’d expect.

And we keep not getting to our big, big fight at the end of the scene after it’s just the two of us on stage when the daughter has stormed out and the friend is gone.

And then, you know, we finally are running it and we get to that moment.

We’re at the moment where we’re gonna get to that fight, and they don’t stop us this time.

So we keep going.

The actress playing MJ and I are getting into the fight scene.

And it’s intense.

We have no idea what we’re supposed to do because it hasn’t been blocked yet, right?

We don’t know where we’re supposed to be or how we’re supposed to do it, so we just go with what feels right, which is how these rehearsals typically work.

Hey, let’s run it and see how it goes.

So we’re doing it.

And we’re fighting.

And she, the actress, gets right in my face as she’s yelling at me.

And my read is that I don’t even realize I’m in a fight about this topic right away, and then when she starts yelling at me, I’m like, okay, I guess this is a fight, fine.

And so then I’m getting back in her face.

And then we’re both getting kind of emotional while we’re having this fight.

There’s like tears in her eyes, there’s tears in my eyes, it’s angry.

And then I end that scene with a really, really cruel line.

It’s my least favorite moment in the show because I’m horrible in that moment.

I say to her, no wonder she hates you, referring to our daughter, which is like mean on a couple different levels.

It comes kind of, not out of nowhere, but it’s unexpected.

My character is generally speaking a nice guy, so it’s a lot, it’s intense.

But we’re doing this fight, it’s loud and emotional and fraught.

And then with that line, which I’ve thought about a lot, I pause for a second and I say it more quietly.

While we’re yelling in top volume, that one, it’s like take a beat and then more controlled and just full of anger, like no wonder she, not that bad, but no wonder she hates you.

And then we finish the scene, that’s the end of the scene, we finish.

And there’s just dead silence in the room.

There’s two directors, a stage manager, a couple other actors.

Nobody’s saying anything.

And then finally one of the co-directors is like, is everybody okay?

And we’re like, yeah, yeah, we like each other.

The actress and I did a high five to show that we were not actually fighting, right?

Obviously it was just the scene.

And they’re like, well, um, that was uncomfortable to watch.

Like it felt like we were looking in and, you know, like eavesdropping on a real couple’s fight.

That was, just do that.

Let’s not run it again, which was the hugest compliment because everything we had done at that rehearsal was run multiple times, which is the normal way one rehearses, right?

You do it and then you do it again, you do it again, you figure it out and lock it in all those things.

But they’re like, nope, just do it just like that.

That was good.

And it was nice to go out of rehearsal feeling great.

I sometimes get in my head.

I think I’m good at being funny.

I think I’m good at improv.

I don’t always know if I’m a good actor and I don’t always know if I’m a good singer.

And man, in this show, there are some excellent singers who have these powerhouse tunes that I just don’t want to be, you know, oh, Lex was also present.

I want to hold my own with him.

And it’s, I don’t know.

I think some people you hear, you know, wow, that person is a great singer.

I’m, you know, very content with my singing.

I just don’t know if I’m amazing the way some of these people are.

But we clearly acted that scene well.

We were both feeling it and then the whole room was feeling it and that was fun.

So anyway, that’s my story of that rehearsal.

I hope you’re having a wonderful Cinco de Mayo, the day when we observe the tragic sinking of the good ship de Mayo.

Goodbye.

Lex.