Charles Burnett Directed Solo Show MULATTO Saga Opens in NYC 10/16

Award-Winning Hollywood Filmmaker Charles Burnett said it was the subject matter that attracted him to the controversial theatrical production Mulatto Saga, written and performed by Juliette Fairley.

"This play picks up where Spike Lee's Jungle Fever left off 20 years ago. I've not seen a movie or play deal with mixed marriages and bi-racial offspring in this way," said Burnett, who directed Halle Berry in the Wedding and the late Lynn Redgrave in the Annihilation of Fish. "It's a new era, an inside look into what transpires over time in a marriage between a white woman and black man. With Tiger Woods' divorce, Juliette's show is timely."

Mulatto Saga opens at Manhattan's Richmond Shepard Theatre on Saturday October 16 and runs weekends through November 6, 2010. The Richmond Shepard Theatre is located at 309 East 26 Street at 2nd Avenue. Show dates and times are Saturday October 16, 23, 30 and November 6 at 4:45pm and on Sunday October 17, 24 and 31 at 7pm. Tickets can be purchased at www.theatermania.com.Or by calling 1-866-811-4111. The website for the show is www.mulatto.me

Mulatto Saga is Miss Fairley's 3rd solo show. Her first one woman show Mulatto's Dilemma won the African American Playwrights Exchange Award for Best Actress in 2008 while Fairley's 2nd one woman show The Making of a Mulatto was reviewed in 2009 in the New York Times, Show Business Weekly, the Amsterdam News and featured on NBC and WBAI radio.

Fairley, who performs all characters, draws on her life experience of having interracial parents.
"The Mulatto Saga picks up where the Making of a Mulatto left off. My parents are lovely, glamorous people however it's been confusing for me romantically because of the dilemma of having one black parent and one white parent to please," she says.

In a comedic way, Fairley portrays her French mother's reaction to her African American boyfriends and her Afro father's reaction to her white boyfriends. The boyfriends include a C-list hip hop star with big 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 a bi-racial metrosexual who prefers men. "My hope is to validate the bi-racial and multicultural experience in America and to enlighten, inform and encourage those brave souls who have the audacity to date and marry outside of their race," says Fairley.

Associate Producer CJ Sailor says he invested in the play because the topic is so timely.
"Since Obama's presidency, so many interracial couples have broken loose. Wherever I go, I seem them running around all over the country, holding hands," says Sailor, who attended Spike Lee's alma mater Morehouse College in Atlanta. "Whether you like it or not, it's a trend that's here to stay."

Burnett worked with Oprah Winfrey and directed Danny Glover in Namibia as well as Ice Cube in The Glass Shield. Fairley played a co-star role in Spike Lee's tv pilot MONY for NBC, hosted Cha Ching Money Makers for the Discovery Channel and studied with the legendary acting teachers Wynn Handman at Carnegie Hall and with Susan Batson.

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