NEW YORK – Chain Theatre and writer/producer Liana Mesaikou are thrilled to present the East Coast premiere of Fifty Shades of Melania, a deep-dive comedic take on the First Lady, exploring the stereotypes women exploit or fight to reverse and our complicity as the audience.

Written and performed by Mesaikou and directed by Chelsea Sutton, this one-woman show opens October 10 for three nights only, as part of the New York International Fringe Festival BYOV (Bring Your Own Venue). After its successful world premiere at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June 2019, Fifty Shades of Melania comes to New York in a revised version that hopes to be Fifty Shades Darker.

Victim or accomplice? Trapped or willing agent? Melania Trump is an enigma; her actions and words contradictory. As both the media and public speculate about the First Lady’s true emotions concerning her husband and the presidency, she maintains an air of mystery – perhaps on purpose.

Don’t miss your chance to discover the answers to such hard-hitting questions as: What is Melania’s favorite movie as a little girl growing up in Slovenia? Which are some of her favorite affirmations? Will she be able to turn FLYLF into a hashtag? Will we find out which character from GoT Melania identifies with? And, of course, does she really care about this country?

Liana Mesaikou (playwright/performer) is an LA-based Greek writer/actress. She has directed and acted in a number of theater productions in Athens (Greece) and London. She earned her Master’s in Text & Performance Studies at King’s College London & RADA, and has studied comedy at The Groundlings, Second City and iO West. She just completed her MFA in Screenwriting at UC Riverside. This is her first one-woman show.

Chelsea Sutton (director) is a fiction writer, playwright, screenwriter and director. Directing credits include the world premieres of Low Tech by Jeff Folschinsky, 99 Impossible Things (writer/director), The X-Mas Cabaret (writer/director), Traveling Carnival Freakshow (writer/director), Modern Love by Anthony Mora, Sally Spector the Musical by David Johnson (Hurricane Season Festival), The Bad Habit by Constance Humphrey Egan (Hurricane Season Festival), The Theory of Silence (co-writer/director). Her assistant director credits include Preposterous and Turkey Day at the Eclectic Company Theatre (dir. Taylor Ashbrook) and Bunny Bunny at the Falcon Theatre (dir. Dimitri Toscas). For more on Chelsea’s work, please visit: https://www.chelseasutton.com/

Fifty Shades of Melania runs October 10 and 11, 6:30 pm, and October 12, 5 pm, at the Chain Studio Theatre, 312 West 36th Street, 4th Floor, in Manhattan.

Tickets are available on Eventbrite, search Fifty Shades of Melania or https://fiftyshadesofmelania.com/.

Liana Mesaikou in a scene from 50 Shades of Melania. Photo: Courtesy of Liana Mesaikou