Man at Work
Jeb Kreager of New Paradise gets physical in Mr. Marmalade.
; "TOASTERS: Amanda Schoonover and Jeb Kreager in <i>Mr. Marmalade</i>.")
TOASTERS: Amanda Schoonover and Jeb Kreager in Mr. Marmalade. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION) |
Jeb Kreager likes to work.
Theater audiences know that from the daring physical effort he's put into every New Paradise Lab show since he co-founded the company in 1995. And his audacious acting skills are steadily requested from 1812 Productions and Theatre Exile, for whom Kreager's performed in 2004's Valparaiso and this month's Mr. Marmalade.
But forget the rigorous theater schedule he's got planned for the next year — a self-choreographed wrestling dance, parts in People's Light's Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily (as Oscar Wilde, yet) and Norwegian director Jo Strømgren's European Lesson.
Kreager likes to work.
As in, he'll do carpentry between shows. He'll build sets, like he's doing at the Wilma for Age of Arousal. During our interview, Kreager stops midquestion to help NPL friend/founder and Marmalade set designer Matt Saunders fix a flat tire.
"Loading sets in, striking sets, building them; I really love that work," says Kreager. Watching the cast and crew during a Marmalade tech rehearsal, Kreager mixes dance pivots with football moves when not moving props and discussing bits of obsessive stage minutiae with director Joe Canuso.
"What makes Jeb perfect for this is that he has ferociousness and physicality, a scariness that reads so big onstage," says Canuso, Theatre Exile's artistic director who also hired Kreager for Valparaiso. "But Jeb also has boyish adolescent charm that's endearing and heartfelt." It helps that both of them are detail-oriented freaks.
"I want to make furniture, design T-shirts and be an actor," says the strapping 6-foot-3 Kreager. "If I only did NPL shows, I'd be a cripple by now."
A Blue Ridge Mountaineer, Kreager went to Virginia Tech with NPL's five principals, including artistic director Whit MacLaughlin. "Dealing with Whit's meditations on our obsessions, turning it into a conversation — literally, we speak for two weeks before we start anything — opened my world," says Kreager. "Whit asks questions. We answer through our physical proposals based on his direction/instruction, then we ask questions." As there are no real "characters" or "text" from the start, NPL is about morphing, about manic movement and physicality, about funny outfits. Mentioning his ruffled dress from Don Juan and the papier-mâché monkey head in This Mansion Is a Hole gave Kreager "fucking incredible flashbacks."
Kreager's currently engaged in what might be Theater Exile's most provocatively odd show in Mr. Marmalade. Exile's focus is what Kreager calls "offbeat sort-of weird pieces mixed with meaty iconic stuff from established playwrights ... where actors are bound by boundlessness."
In Canuso's estimation, Noah Haidle's Marmalade has all the dark, emotionally resonant elements Exile is known for. Here, a 4-year-old "Lucy," played convincingly by 30-year-old actress Amanda Schoonover, deals with the pain of a drunken mother by creating an imaginary friend, Kreager's "Mr. Marmalade." Only this Topper-like character is alternately a debonair charmer and an abusive scumbag. "She fakes nothing and makes everything believable," says Canuso of Schoonover. "And Jeb can sell it."
"I ballet-icize," says Kreager. That's where his work with NPL comes in. To Kreager, being the dashing and devilish Mr. Marmalade comes down to playing the darkly humorous role straight as an arrow. He's imaginary, but he's real to her.
"I just play the truth," says Kreager. He takes every turn of his heel and every fingering of an object as if he's building a model — with deep, detailed thought. "I told Joe [Canuso] I wanted to get very specific for Marmalade: turn it into a dance and be specific with movement because it's her dream. So it has to be everything she wants."
What does Kreager want?
"I want to work."
Mr. Marmalade, through Nov. 25, Theater Exile at Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American St., 215 922-4462, theatreexile.org.
Also In This Week's Arts Section
Comments
Be the first to comment on this article.