Mix Manhattan’s crazy street life with a crew of desperate young idealists and cynics and some clever plot twists and you have the formula for the entertaining Web series “The Outreach.”
Although the series was shot in New York, it has many Pittsburgh ties. Gina Marie Jamieson stars as the anti-heroine Essie. Carina Jollie is a co-creator and editor. Both are Pittsburgh natives who met after they moved to New York.
Ms. Jamieson grew up in Mt. Lebanon, and her interest in acting started when she was a kid, beginning with classes at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. She went to Boston University and studied classical acting at the London Academy of Music and Arts. Her credits include “Losing It With John Stamos” and the role of the free-spirited Jill Tanner in the 2014 Stage Door production of “Butterflies Are Free” in Miami.
Ms. Jollie grew up in Penn Hills and majored in film at Point Park University. She did her graduate work at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She worked with Pocketwatch, the Upright Comedy Brigade’s YouTube comedy channel, and is now a digital producer and editor for “The Chris Gethard Show” on Fusion. She met “The Outreach” co-creator Stefan Hartmann when both were in the graduate dramatic writing program at NYU. He has written several plays and works as a writer at Nickelodeon.
They came up with an idea for a Web series that would be cheap to produce and shoot guerrilla-style outside on the streets. “The Outreach” is based on Mr. Hartmann’s experiences working as a street fundraiser in Toronto. The fictitious Outreach is a third-party fundraising organization that sends teams into the streets to raise funds for the cause du jour. Ms. Jamieson’s character, Essie, signs on for the job. The turnover and pressure to meet quotas is high and the pay is low. She suddenly finds herself in turf battles with a group of Greenpeace activists, encounters with creepy perverts and dealing with crowds of pedestrians trying to dodge the fundraisers.
“ ‘The Outreach’ was created out of what happens when people walk away from you — just the absolute abuse that you take doing that on the street, ” Ms. Jamieson says. “I can’t go to my grocery store without passing three people fundraising. And my grocery store’s a block and a half away from me. You feel so bad because they say ‘Do you have a minute to support gay rights?’ ‘Do you have a minute to support the dolphins?’ ‘Do you like children?’ You feel very bad ignoring somebody, especially if they’re fundraising for a cause that you feel good about.”
The humor in “The Outreach” has teeth, but for all its satire and cynicism, it also celebrates the altruistic spirit that wants to make the world a better place. “While ‘The Outreach’ might be pitched as a series about a ragtag group of fundraisers, it’s also at its heart about a very real struggle to do something meaningful with your life, to be a good person, but also be a person who can afford her rent,” Ms. Jollie said.
Some of the characters were inspired by real street team members, including one self-promoting aspiring actor who would hand out his head shots instead of charity literature.
Because many of the cast members also had worked with the improv comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, the show has some hilarious spontaneous moments.
Several other “Outreach” cast members have local ties: Dylan Grunn and Rasheda Crockett are Point Park University alumni. Carolyn Malfa, who plays the street team’s crazed supervisor Annie, was in the CLO production of “Buddy — The Buddy Holly Story.”
And many of the donors to the series Kickstarter campaign are from this area. The humor of crowdfunding a project about the horrors of fundraising is not lost on Ms. Jollie, who posted an online video of herself yelling out the names of all of the Kickstarter donors in Times Square.
The series was featured in The Online Film Festival in July and will be featured in Webfest Berlin in August.
Now that season one’s six episodes are online at theoutreachseries.com, they’re working on generating buzz and interest in season two. Unlike many Web series, which are more like sketch comedy, “The Outreach” is a scripted series that could translate to TV or to streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon.
“Carina says we may need more than one season in order to shop something around,” Ms. Jamieson said. “But we are really inspired by the success of all these homegrown Web series coming out right now that are being picked up by other platforms.”
Adrian McCoy: amccoy@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1865.
First Published: August 5, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
