Patrick County High School graduate Jeb Kreager recently wrapped up a 16-week Broadway run of “The Fear of 13,” a production based on the true story of a man who spent more than two decades on death row for a crime he did not commit.
Kreager, who moved to Patrick County with his family as a baby, graduated from PCHS in 1993.
“The Fear of 13” tells the story of Nick Yarris, who spent 22 years on Pennsylvania’s death row before being exonerated by DNA evidence.
“In fact, he was one of the first inmates in the state of Pennsylvania to be exonerated by DNA,” Kreager said.
Kreager said the play touches on Yarris’ childhood, when he was in and out of trouble, as well as his time in prison.
“He basically lied to get out of a lesser charge and then ended up getting railroaded into a conviction for the abduction, rape, and murder of a woman in Delaware and went to prison. He was in prison for a total of 23 years and I think 22 of that was in solitary,” he said.
The play also focuses on Yarris’ relationship with Jacki, a prison advocate who interviewed inmates about living conditions and fair treatment in prison.
“They got to talking and struck up a relationship and actually fell in love and got married. He just hit roadblock after roadblock in his exoneration fight, and she finally just couldn’t do it anymore and after, I guess at least a decade of fighting, she sort of left the picture. At that point he was well on his way to having the wheels in motion to getting his conviction thrown out,” Kreager said.
Yarris was played by Academy Award winner Adrien Brody, while Golden Globe Award winner Tessa Thompson played Jacki.
The action of the play literally swirls around Yarris, Kreager said, with the character remaining seated on a prison stool for almost the entire show.
“Tables get moved in and all of a sudden he’s sitting at a judge’s table or he’s sitting at a table in a courtroom, and the scene changes and he’s sitting at a table talking to his lawyer. So, the other characters in the play, play many different roles,” he said.
Kreager is listed in the program as Man #2 and played about nine different characters.
“All the male characters who play inmates all play other characters in his story. So for instance, I play a death row inmate, but I also play one of the head guards at the prison. I also play one of the police officers who he escapes from on the way to his appeals trial, he was on the run for a month at one point, and I played both the cop who loses him and the cop who finds him,” he said.
Kreager also played Yarris’ father and the widower of the man he supposedly killed.
This was Kreager’s first time performing in a show with a character track, or acting as multiple characters.
“It’s really fun, and it takes you out of your head. Sometimes when you’re doing theater it’s easy to kind of get overly technical about it or get kind of in your head about a character or a role. It was kind of freeing, it was nice to do a show like this where what you’re really doing is just sort of representing all these people that he encounters along the way,” he said.
“The Fear of 13” ran for 16 weeks, with eight shows performed each week.
Kreager said two shows were performed on Wednesdays and Saturdays, along with a late matinee on Sundays.
This was not Kreager’s first Broadway production. He also starred in “Oslo,” a play about the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, in 2017.
“We ran off Broadway in 2016, and then found out literally the day after opening that we were moving to Broadway. So we did the run of that show off Broadway in 2016 and then started up again in February 2017 until the middle of July of that year,” he said.
“Oslo” won the Tony Award for Best Play and Best Featured Actor in a Play for Michael Aronov at the 71st Tony Awards.
“That was fun to be a part of, even just a small part, because I have a lot of love for that show,” Kreager said.
Kreager said he became interested in theater while attending Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
He was a communications major with dreams of becoming a broadcaster, but switched to theater after taking and enjoying a stage acting elective for non-majors.
“We did our final scenes for the semester, and ‘The Odd Couple’ by Neil Simon. It was great, it was fun, got laughs, and it was the first time I ever really experienced that,” he said.
While at Virginia Tech, Kreager fell in with a group of actors and a director who often worked together. They eventually moved to Philadelphia and started the New Paradise Laboratories theater group.
“I was in Philadelphia for 11 years, and we did maybe 16 shows with that company. Then I moved to New York in 2009 just to see if I could make a dollar and a cent doing more tv and filmthere wasn’t really much tv and film going on in Philadelphia at the time,” he said.
Since moving to New York, Kreager has recurred and guest-starred on several television shows, including “Marvel’s The Punisher,” “Person of Interest,” “Law & Order: SVU” and “Chicago Med.”
Kreager said his biggest television role came in “Mare of Easttown,” an HBO miniseries starring Kate Winslet.
His movie credits include James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” Gareth Edwards’ “The Creator,” “Hell House LLC” and more.
“I have done a bit more theater in the last few years, which has been really nice because I’d really love to sort of bounce back and forth just because one is sort of a palate cleanser for the other,” Kreager said.
Since “The Fear of 13” ended, Kreager said he already has work lined up for January, when he is scheduled to shoot an FX show.
“I shot a pilot last May for FX that got picked up, and we’ll shoot that in January of next year. I’ll recur on that show, I’m not a series regular, but I’ll show up in several episodes of that. That’ll shoot out in Vancouver as of right now,” he said.
While Kreager fell in love with theater at Virginia Tech, his first taste of the stage came much closer to home.
He performed in a PCHS production of “The Sound of Music,” playing Friedrich von Trapp.
