Tickets $15
Thursday October 10, 6:30 PM
Friday October 11, 6:30 PM
Saturday October 12, 5:00 PM

Chain Studio Theatre, 312 West 36th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10018

Poster created by: Mimika Kapoula
Pictures by: Chelsea Sutton

Written and performed by:
Liana Mesaikou
Directed by: Chelsea Sutton

After a successful run at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June 2019, Fifty Shades of Melania comes to the New York Fringe 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.

This one-woman comedy show aims to explore the various faces of FLOTUS, who really doesn’t care. Or does she? Do u? What are some of the stereotypes women exploit or fight to reverse? What is our complicity as the audience?

Liana Mesaikou (playwright/performer) is an LA-based Greek comedian (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 recently completed her MFA in Screenwriting at UC Riverside where she was awarded the prestigious Gluck fellowship to develop two comedic interactive projects for kids (Level Up! and Time Travelers). Fifty Shades of Melania is her first one-woman show. Liana also wrote the script for the 12th Orpheus Awards at the LA Greek Film Festival in 2018 and is a late night comedy contributor on Ladies Night Live! She can be seen around LA performing improv (short & long form) and sketch comedy at venues such as the Gary Austin stage at the Groundlings, Second City, the Pack Theater, the Clubhouse etc. In September 2020, she started hosted her own late-night show “Dear America with Liana Mesaikou“.

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 click here.