Twists in the tale: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding explores immigrant experience through a day at the salon

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding peeks into the lives of an older generation, in 2019, having emigrated from the same part of the continent. Both plays probe Black female identity using a single setting yet this one takes it a step further by confining the story to one working day.

The cast of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding on opening night at Manhattan Theatre Club, New York, in 2023. Photograph: Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock

It is an uncomfortably hot morning in Harlem, New York, as two women open the shutters of a braiding salon. It appears to be a day like any other, as a band of hairdressers turn their customers’ intricate visions into reality. But, according to playwright Jocelyn Bioh, by nightfall “we end in a very different place than where we started”.

Bioh’s Tony award-winning 2023 play Jaja’s African Hair Braiding takes theatregoers through 12 hours at the eponymous salon. Its staff are predominantly from west Africa, now navigating a country where immigration is often misunderstood and politically weaponised. Their conversations often address “how difficult it is to come to another country, particularly a western one like America,” says Bioh.

This month, the play opens at Lyric Hammersmith in London, directed by Monique Touko, who had a hit with Bioh’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play at the same theatre. “The opportunity to work with Jocelyn for the second time was something I couldn’t say no to,” says Touko. “The legacy of School Girls lives on!”