THE BUILDING: UNDER LOCKDOWN to Be Presented via Zoom

Written by playwright and television writer Ed Napier with co-direction by Emmy winning television producer Jesse Green and actress/filmmaker Jodie Markell, the first episode of this love letter to New York launched on online on July 1st.

The Building: Under Lockdown tells the story of a group of residents who live in a co-op on the Upper West Side of New York City. The cast is comprised of some of New York's most beloved stage actors: Pun Bandhu, Laura Esterman, Bobby Lupone, Jodie Markell, Kathryn Grody, Alexandra Napier, Kevin R. Free and Joe Delafield. The characters are a group of iconographic New York personalities living in their Riverside Drive apartment building. With the appearance of Covid-19, they have to navigate their new shut-down world and the complications it presents - while juggling the ongoing fights, feuds and intrigues of their neighbors.

The Building began as a stage play before Covid-19 ever existed. Author Ed Napier reconceived it as The Building: Under Lockdown in the immediate days after New York shut down, and shooting began one week later. "For artists the need to create is just basic. We really needed a reason to get out of bed and do something," says Napier. "Creating a show that could be shot entirely on Zoom was born out of my desire to create something now and in the moment."

"Our characters are sometimes insufferable and sometimes lovable, comically idiosyncratic and infuriatingly stubborn - but ultimately, they are extraordinarily human," says producer Anne Hamburger. Building residents include an over-the-top controlling President of the Co-op Board, Gladys Pasternak (Kathryn Grody); an emergency room physician, Stephen Cho (Pun Bandhu) who Gladys refuses to allow into the building; Cho's caring wife, Mallory Catalano (Alexandra Napier), a public- defender; a privileged former financier, Charlie Tuttle (Joe Delafield), who's pursuing the Episcopal priesthood to the dismay of his wonderfully quirky actress wife, Chloe (Jodie Markell); and a violinist/music teacher, Midge Rivington (Laura Esterman), self-ascribed "last true Marxist on the Upper West Side," who's having an on-again/off-again romance with everybody's favorite Jewish Uncle, Benny Weinstein (Robert LuPone), one of those menschy types who knows a little bit about every subject known to humanity.

The first episode of The Building: Under Lockdown will premiere online July 1st, 2020 at 1 pm via Youtube and Facebook. Thereafter it will live on the social media channels listed below. The Executive Producers are Ed Napier, Jesse Green, Jodie Markell and Anne Hamburger.

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