Jaja’s African Hair braiding
I recently saw Ghanaian playwright Jocelyn Bioh’s fantastic new work “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and I cannot stop talking about it. I became a fan of her work when I saw “School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play” in 2017 and enjoyed the plot, acting, and set so much I saw it twice.
For anyone who has ever spent a moment getting their hair braided or their hair done at a salon, this is the play for you. It was a celebration of Black womanhood, entrepreneurship, sisterhood, and Black ethnicity. It was also a complex reflection on immigration both documented and undocumented.
A decade ago I wrote a book entitled “Black Ethnics” which explores the political diversity within the ethnically diverse Black electorate. I looked at the similarities and differences between Black American, Afro-Caribbean, and Africans living in the U.S. in order to better understand political attitudes, wants, and needs. Understanding how the myriad of Blacks view their chances of the American Dream is complicated and ever changing, and Bioh’s latest play takes a snapshot of some of those complexities through nuanced characters in a Harlem braid shop.
The actors, the wigs, the music, and the set all came together to transport the viewer into a salon where you empathize and identify with the different characters who came in and out of the shop. I see a lot of theater and am always impressed when a director chooses to portray the mundane in a new and creative way. This time, director Whitney White portrayed the passage of time on television screens in between African MTV-style videos and clips of Nollywood-style movies.
For me, the mark of a good play is a theater experience where I identify with characters and leave the theater thinking about various scenes and trying to replay them in my mind. On the ride home from the theater I texted almost every Black woman in my phone to make sure they made a plan to see this play. There are so many dynamics in any Black salon, and the racial, ethnic, and class dynamics were so authentic I was left wanting to immediately see it again. And the wigs!!!! How does one seemingly do a head full of microbraids in front of you in under 90 minutes?!?! “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” was a truly unique theater experience. I was so proud to see a production of brilliant Black female actors with an incredibly well written script and a visually impressive backdrop. The play runs just 90 minutes with no intermission and will be staged through October at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater at 261 W 47th St, New York, NY 10036. Do not miss it!
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University; author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream”; and co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC and host of The Blackest Questions podcast at TheGrio. She is a 2023-24 Moynihan Public Scholars Fellow at CCNY.
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