I am currently rehearsing, as you may recall, for the play Arsenic and Old Lace.

If you’re not familiar with that show, don’t worry.

I wasn’t really either until my buddy told me he was directing it about a year ago.

There’s a movie version, and it was on Broadway first, then the movie.

And it’s a farce.

It’s actually based on a true story of sorts, but the play focuses on two older women, sisters who live together and also secretly kill people, which they believe they are doing euthanistically—not a word—but they believe they’re doing a charity, like people who are done with all their living and are ready to die.

They murder them.

Then their nephew, I guess, who lives with them, who views them as moms, Teddy, who is also crazy and thinks that he is Teddy Roosevelt, buries them in the basement, which he considers digging the Panama Canal.

Meanwhile, the bad guy, who I play, also is a murderer, but doesn’t know that his aunts are murderers.

And I, Jonathan, bring one of my recently murdered bodies and want to hide it in the house.

That’s kind of what the show is a bit about.

I haven’t even mentioned, like, the protagonist, Mortimer.

I’m also constantly confused that Mortimer is the protagonist because I was once in a show where I played the bad guy and his name was Mortimer, Mortimer Frothingham.

So I think of Mortimer as a bad guy name, but in this show, it’s the good guy name.

Anyway, Mortimer is there, and he realizes, he learns that his aunts have been murdering all these people, and he’s very upset.

He wants to pin it on his unwell mentally brother and have the brother committed so the aunts can get away with all the murders they’ve been doing.

A perfect family story.

But anyway.

I need to figure out my voice for the show.

Your Daily Lex.

This is not a British accent show.

That’s not what we do in this one.

So, Mortimer—sorry for that fun music.

Wow.

I hope that music never stops.

That’s a speaker turning on that has decided to play all that music.

But anyway, Mortimer, the main guy, he talks with one of those Mid-Atlantic accents, you see, and he’s kind of like, you know, that old-fashioned style of conversation.

But that’s not my voice.

I’m the bad guy.

I don’t talk that way.

So at first I was trying to use an extremely deep voice, deep and evil, but it didn’t feel right, and I didn’t have enough range with that voice.

So I had an inspiration, because I’m menacing, I’m intimidating, I’m evil, I’m scheming, and I realized, who is all those things?

Frankly—no, I didn’t do that voice.

What I did was I thought of Mr.

Burns.

And so now I’m using a more raspy voice when I’m playing Jonathan, and I’m channeling my own inner Mr.

Burns from The Simpsons, and I think that’s really working well.

It’s definitely better than just relying on the deep voice.

I know of two people who consume this podcast by reading the transcript as opposed to listening.

They are both my parents, and it’s funny to me to think about how talking about these different voices is largely meaningless if you can’t hear them, and how the transcript must look odd because of it.

But yes, I’ve decided that this is the voice that I think—I think—makes sense for the character.

I still have plenty of time to evolve it and think about it, consider it, try it.

But the thing that’s tricky is I think in part because I’m doing a different voice, and in part because I just did noises off, we were all British, every once in a while I slip into a British accent when I’m using this voice, which is not correct.

If anything, I should slip into that Mid-Atlantic accent since the other guy’s my brother and he has it.

Spoiler alert: he’s actually not my brother, but I don’t find that out until late in the show.

Anyway, that’s fun.

That’s my voice work.

It is, to me, always a joy, a hoot, to get to do non-my-normal voice, to get to do a voice in a show.

That’s fun, because it’s more to get to play with, I guess.

So I’m looking forward to that.

Right now, all of our rehearsals thus far have been table work, where we’re going through the characters and thinking about what, you know, who we are and plumbing the meaning of some of the stuff.

And I think finally, starting tomorrow, we’ll actually be blocking, although I’m not called for Wednesday or Thursday rehearsals, so I won’t be blocking anything just yet.

But next week, next week I’ll be blocking.

I think that’s all I got.

Hope you’re having a wonderful Tuesday, November 10th, just one week from that blue wave.

What a great Tuesday that was.

I wish you all the best, and we will talk again soon, although I’m not exactly sure when, because I do have a busy day tomorrow, so we’ll see.

You’ll be fine.

Nobody panic.

Goodbye.

Lex.