Mulatto Saga Continues Its Run in Hollywood With NAACP Consideration

Interracial marriages are on the rise in the United States and Juliette Fairley is on a mission to enlighten couples on what obstacles they and their bi-racial children may face. Miss Fairley is the star of the one woman show Mulatto Saga, which performs at 3pm on Sunday, September 12 in Hollywood at Studio Stage Theatre, 520 N. Western near Melrose Avenue. Directed by famed filmmaker Charles Burnett, the Beverly Hills Hollywood NAACP Theatre Award Committee will be in the audience reviewing the show for award consideration in 2011.

"Since Obama was elected, bi-racial has taken on a whole new meaning," says Burnett who is best known for directing Lynn Redgrave in the Annihilation of Fish, Halle Berry in The Wedding, Ice Cube in The Glass Shield and Danny Glover in Namibia. "What attracted me to Juliette's play is that it is an inside look into what goes on in an interracial marriage." Future performances at the Studio Stage Theatre are slated for October 10, November 21 and December 19, 2010.

The latest census figures show that interracial marriages in America now account for 8 percent of all marriages, up from 7 percent in 2000. Since then, mixed-raced marriages have grown 20 percent to about 4.5 million couples with 14.5 percent of black men and 6.5 percent of black women now marrying whites. Pundits attribute this to an increase in African American educational attainment and more professional interaction between whites and blacks. Miss Fairley thinks President Obama has something to do with it.

"I grew up during a time when interracial marriages were scarce but President Obama is changing that and very quickly. I didn't see my bi-racial life and interracial family experience reflected in society in the 1980s. I still don't. That's why I wrote this play to give interracial and bi-racial people some validation," says Fairley, the daughter of a white French mother and a military father who met in France during the aftermath of World War 2.

In addition to discussing the Jim Crow South and the Nazi invasion of France, the Mulatto Saga is peppered with a French woman's reaction to her husband's Afro culture and their bi-racial daughter's boyfriends, including a C-list hip hop star with kinky hair, a Jamaican with a marijuana habit, a Frenchman with a penchant for threesomes, a Brad Pitt look a like who requires blond hair in his black girlfriends and an El DeBarge look-a-like who prefers men.

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