As Jocelyn Bioh’s play about life in a Harlem hairdresser’s gets a London run, she and director Monique Touko explain why its story of west Africans styling themselves for life in the US will resonate across the Atlantic
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.
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