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!”
