Broadway's Mallory Portnoy Launches New Series HUMAN INTEREST

Mallory Portnoy (who plays Gertie Cummings in Daniel Fish's Tony Award © winning revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! at Circle in the Square) and actor-playwright Matthew-Lee Erlbach (Steppenwolf's The Doppelgänger, starring Rainn Wilson and directed by Tina Landau), have created Human Interest, a character-based dry comedy moc doc series inspired by real people, which lovingly turns the camera on the eccentric outliers of New York City and explores, loneliness, community, and our relationship to technology. Written and directed by Erlbach, the short-form series introduces us to everyone from competitive whistlers and professional cuddlers to neo-luddites and sex robot romantics. The series, which recently won Best Digital ShortSeries at Series Fest, includes actors Michael Cyril Creighton (The Amateurs, High Maintenance, Spotlight), Max Jenkins (The Mysteries of Laura, High Maintenance, Dead to Me), Ryan Spahn (Gloria, Moscow Moscow Moscow..., He's Way More Famous Than You) and Deb Lapidus. It is produced by Erlbach, Portnoy, Anne Troup, Hannes Otto and Gabriel Long.

Check out three episodes below!

Mallory Portnoy is a Chicago-born and bred actor and filmmaker living in New York. She studied improv at The Second City and earned her BFA in Acting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, before moving to New York where she later attended Juilliard for graduate school. Mallory is currently reprising her role as Gertie Cummings in Daniel Fish's Tony Award Winning revival of Oklahoma! on Broadway, after doing the production at Bard Summerscape, and this past fall in the critically acclaimed sold out off-Broadway run at St. Ann's Warehouse (named the #1 Theatrical Event of 2018 by Time Magazine and listed as the best theatre of 2018 in The New York Times, Time Out, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and BuzzFeed to name a few). Other New York credits include A Midsummer Night's Dream (The Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park) and Privacy (The Public Theater in association with The Donmar Warehouse). Regionally, Mallory recently appeared in the world premiere of Matthew Lopez's Zoey's Perfect Wedding at Denver Center for the Performing Arts, as well as productions at Williamstown Theatre Festival and Chautauqua Theater Company. Mallory is co-creator with Matthew-Lee Erlbach of the comedy series Human Interest (Winner of Best Digital Short Series at Series Fest) and Roger, The Chicken (LA Comedy Film Fest, Friars Club Comedy Film Fest, Middlestate Independent Comedy Film Festival, Boston Underground Film Festival, Bootleg Film Festival Toronto, Houston Comedy Film Festival). TV: "Grace & Frankie" (Netflix), "Helpsters" (Apple TV).

Matthew-Lee Erlbach is an actor-playwright from Chicago/New York, living in LA. His play The Doppelgänger (an international farce), starring Rainn Wilson and directed by Tina Landau, premiered to a sold-out run at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, where he most recently developed his political dramas REVELATIONS and RADICAL. A HUMANITAS New Voices recipient, he has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Laurents /Hatcher Foundation, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, Puffin Foundation, and was a member of Ars Nova's Play Group. His plays have been developed/commissioned with The New Group, Steppenwolf, Vineyard, Ars Nova, MCC, Williamstown, NYTW, and the Orchard Project, among others. Most recent New York productions include the critically-acclaimed Off-Bway world-premiere of his solo play and Handbook for An American Revolutionary (Tony Speciale, dir) at the GYM at Judson; Eager To Lose extended Off-Broadway at Ars Nova/nominated for Off Broadway Alliance Award (Wes Grantom/Portia Krieger, dirs); and Sex Of the Baby (Michelle Bossy, dir). He has written for MTV, Nickelodeon, WWE, sold projects to SONY and has written for MASTERS OF SEX/Showtime, and GYPSY/Netflix. A proud graduate of the public school system from K-College, Matthew-Lee has run a writing program for Midnight Mission's Home Light program and is a team leader for Habitat for Humanity, locally and globally. He is also an advocate for ethical transhumanism