“Now there’s no breath, no sound, no light / Damn you for dying while we’re in a fight / I need to learn to play like you do / But now there’s no chance, because now there’s no you.”

The one-man musical monologue “The Lion” opens at Pendragon Theatre tonight, with shows every night through Saturday.

Associate Director Ashlee Wasmund said the script is universally personal. It is touching, thought-provoking and a cathartic community experience, she said.

“The Lion” was written by Benjamin Scheuer as an autobiographic look at his adolescence and adulthood.

Jake Allen rehearses “The Lion” at Pendragon Theatre on Monday. The one-man musical monologue opens tonight and runs through Saturday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

Allen is one of four performers Scheuer has approved to perform his show, because of how technical the instrumentation is and how personal the story is to Scheuer.

The story tells the real-life account of a musician grappling with his father’s death, his father’s life and his father’s legacy, all while experiencing own brush with mortality. The lyrics Allen performs as Ben are frank, but poetic in their bluntness. Moments of humor, drama or despair are punctuated by musical stings on the guitar, moments of sudden silence or intense rhythmic strumming.

The play features jaunty fingerstyle picking, angsty electric guitar and sweeping dramatic introspections.

Allen joined the production as an understudy when “The Lion” played in Arizona. He got an Instagram message from the original director, but thought it was spam.

“Would you like to try out for a one-man musical?” the director asked.

Jake Allen rehearses “The Lion” at Pendragon Theatre on Monday. The one-man musical monologue opens tonight and runs through Saturday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

“My first reaction was, ‘There’s no such thing as a one-man musical,'” Allen said.

But after reading the script, he said, he was hooked. He’s now bringing his performance of the show to Saranac Lake.

Allen is a fingerstyle guitar player, with a focus on modern, percussive sound — using the body of the guitar as a drum or playing with both hands on the neck of the instrument.

“The Lion” is mostly hybrid picking, which adds a pick to the fingerstyle sound. Allen equates learning this to learning a new language and said it is some of the hardest guitar playing he’s done. The acting almost comes easy compared to the guitar, he said.

Allen plays all six Takamine guitars over the course of the show, as several are set up in alternate tunings. He, like Ben, has a self-imposed love for playing in many tunings.

“It’s a curse that some musicians give themselves,” Allen said. “It’s a masochistic way of writing music.”

Allen was a musician but hadn’t done theater before. He had wanted to get into acting. Wasmund said everyone has been impressed with how well he seamlessly transitions between singing and speaking, embodying the character of the script while performing musically.

“Any theater that he takes it to, people are like, ‘Are you sure this is the first time?'” she said. “To carry a show as a one-person performer is hard in and of itself. All the music technique layered on top of it is really exciting and impressive.”

A self-described “perfectionist,” Allen said he had to do it justice since he was trusted with sharing such a personal piece of art by its creator. It is a story he relates to and he feels like he’s telling parts of his own story.

Allen comes from a musical family. His father is a full-time musician. Growing up, music was just a thing to do, he said. Like Ben, he went through a “rebellious phase” where he got into aggressive rock and first picked up an electric guitar, confusing his father, who had raised him on progressive and scholarly music. Eventually, he “balanced out” and started listening to acoustic fingerstyle guitarists like Michael Hedges or Andy McKee.

The themes of anger, regret, love of music, familial connection and health struggles in the script touch a lot of people, Wasmund said. She is working through some of these things in her own life today. The play is a way for her to process all these things.

Wasmund loves how the music progresses and gets more complex as the emotions and themes become more complex. Allen described this as “sound as text.”

“The Lion” is more stripped-back from a typical musical. Wasmund said this creates an intimate, intense and authentic experience that she expects will play well in the cozy Pendragon Theatre.

“The Lion” opens tonight at 7 p.m. as a “Stage-plus-Scoop Night.” Students will receive a $10 ticket and a scoop of ice cream from Mountain Mist. Shows continue on Wednesday at 5 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m.

Tickets can be purchased at tinyurl.com/b7a6fxrd.