Jocelyn Bioh ‘08 Nominated for Three 2018 Drama Desk Awards
Nominations for the 63rd Annual Drama Desk Awards were announced on April 26th. Alumna Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play got three nominations: Outstanding Play, Outstanding Wig and Hair and the Special Award for Outstanding Ensemble. Bioh was also nominated for Outstanding Featured Actress for her performance on Suzan-Lori Parks’ In the Blood, directed by Sarah Benson. The revival is also nominated for Outstanding Revival of a Play and Outstanding Set Design.
MCC’s production of School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play, directed by Tony award winner Rebecca Taichman, opened on November 19, 2017 to glowing reviews and was extended twice due to the high demand. The play is set in 1986 at a Ghanaian boarding school and it centers around a group of girls hoping to represent Ghana in the Miss Universe Pageant. The play was a New York Times Critic's Pick and Essence magazine called it the most important Off-Broadway play of the season.
The revival of In The Blood was also a Critic's Pick. It was produced by Signature Theatre in tandem with Suzan-Lori Parks' Fucking A, directed by Jo Bonney, as part of the The Red Letter Plays, a unique opportunity to see two plays by one writer in dialogue with each other.
Last season, The New York Times published an article about Bioh and her trajectory, praising her performances and her writing: "In her acting roles, she gravitates toward edgier, genre-defying work, like Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon or Suzan-Lori Parks’ In the Blood. The scripts she writes are affectionate comedies, humanizing stories of friendship and love," according to the Times.
Jocelyn Bioh is a Ghanaian-American writer/performer from New York City. NYC acting credits include: In the Blood, Everybody (Signature, Lortel Nomination); Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons); An Octoroon (Soho Rep); Neighbors (The Public Theater); and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2015. Her plays include: 2015 Kilroys' List selection Nollywood Dreams which was presented in the Spring of 2017 as part of The Cherry Lane Mentor Project, School Girls (Kilroys' List 2016), Happiness and Joe (2017), African Americans (Ruby Prize Finalist 2011), Goddess (book writer), and The Ladykiller's Love Story, for which she conceived the story and wrote the libretto with music/lyrics by Cee Lo Green. She is a commissioned playwright with MTC and Atlantic Theater Company, is a Resident Playwright at Lincoln Center and is a 2017-18 Tow Playwright-in-Residence with MCC. She holds a BA in English/Theatre from The Ohio State University.