New Play by Jocelyn Bioh ’08 to Open 2023-24 Broadway Season
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, a new play by Jocelyn Bioh ’08, will premiere on Broadway in fall 2023.
The world premiere of Bioh’s play will welcome you into Jaja’s bustling hair braiding salon in Harlem where every day, a lively and eclectic group of West African immigrant hair braiders are creating masterpieces on the heads of neighborhood women. During one sweltering summer day, love will blossom, dreams will flourish and secrets will be revealed. The uncertainty of their circumstances simmers below the surface of their lives, and when it boils over, it forces this tight-knit community to confront what it means to be an outsider on the edge of the place they call home.
Performances of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding will begin this fall at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and will be directed by Obie winner Whitney White (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord).
In a 2022 interview with Rachelle Legrand for American Theatre, Bioh said that her goal as a writer is first and foremost to entertain audiences. “But her work does far more than simply delight; it also shines a light,” writes Legrand. “With plays like School Girls, or the African Mean Girls Play, Nollywood Dreams, and the musical Goddess…Bioh is doing her part to reshape African narratives in the American theatre, telling comedic and truthful stories that American stages hadn’t seen before.”
Bioh’s School Girls won the 2018 Lortel Award for Best Play, was nominated for three Drama Desk Awards, and was a New York Times Critic’s Pick. It also recently made its U.K. premiere at London's Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, where performances are scheduled to run through July 15, 2023. The play follows a group of girls at Ghana’s most exclusive boarding school as they are influenced by the presence of a recruiter for the Miss Universe pageant. The show wields comedy as a way to explore difficult issues, including colorism and bullying.
“African comedy—you know, those two words can be synonymous,” Bioh said. “The key is about just giving people a chance. Sometimes they may fail, but you may end up with something kind of groundbreaking and exciting and thrilling in a way that you never anticipated.”
Read more about the upcoming show, including schedule updates, here.
Jocelyn Bioh is a Ghanaian-American writer and performer from New York City. School Girls: Or, The African Mean Girls Play completed successful runs at the MCC Theater and Center Theatre Group between 2017-2018. Bioh also conceived and wrote the libretto for The Ladykiller’s Love Story (music/lyrics by Cee Lo Green), which is in development at New York’s historic Apollo Theatre. Other plays include: Happiness and Joe, Nollywood Dreams and African Americans. Bioh has collaborated often with Directing alumnus Saheem Ali ’07, including on the musical Goddess and Merry Wives, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, for the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park. She has received commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club and the Atlantic Theater Company, and she was a Resident Playwright at LCT3. Bioh staffed season two of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It for Netflix and wrote an episode of the Netflix show Russian Doll.