“Greg and Donny” are back – and they’re dealing with “Dat Virus.”
The web comedy sketch series, created by Johnstown natives Jeff Skowron and Matt Yeager in 2009, has been on a break since about 2016. The gang – including Kim Cea and Tamera Gindlesperger-Fisher – has gotten back together to address the global health crisis from a Western Pennsylvania perspective. They dare to apply their trademark humor to a grave topic.
“I’m so happy people have found it cathartic,” said Skowron, an actor based in Los Angeles. “Seeing reactions online like ‘I needed this’ is the greatest reward. I’ve been extremely serious about this crisis since the top of March. The scent of bleach is constantly in my nose.”
As Gindlesperger-Fisher (also a Johnstown-area native) put it: “My love language is humor.”
Yeager, an actor based in New Jersey, said “we thought it was a good time to bring the show back since literally everyone has the same thing on their minds. And we are in a unique position of having a series that we can film while not physically interacting with anyone.”
It is a show built for social distancing. Each actor films his or her part and sends it Yeager for editing.
In fact, “Greg and Donny” has always been about virtual interaction. The show is about two Johnstown guys talking to each other over a video chat. Cea plays Gina, Greg’s wife, chiming in from the background. Gindlesperger-Fisher joined the ensemble later as their friend Missy.
Cea, a native of Carnegie, is an actress in New York. “Every time I think G&D is dead in the water, Matt and Jeff surprise me. I got a text last Thursday. We had a group FaceTime read-thru on Friday. On Saturday, I was walking around my bedroom holding my iPhone recording my lines by myself.”
Yeager described how this episode came together: “In some ways it happens as it always does — one of us says, ‘We should do more ‘Greg & Donnys,’ and a day later we have a script. But this particular moment in time is so dramatically unfamiliar and worrisome.”
