Jaja's African Hair Braiding by Jocelyn Bioh

Award-winning playwright Jocelyn Bioh brings us a play that deftly balances humor and gravity and seduces us with its beauty and great heart. Inside Jaja’s bustling hair braiding shop in Harlem we meet a lively and eclectic group of West African hair braiders as they transform their neighborhood clients. On a hot summer day they laugh, fight, and share their dreams about the future. The uncertainty of their circumstances simmer 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.

Jocelyn Bioh is an award-winning, Tony Award nominated Ghanaian-American writer/performer from New York City. Her written works for theatre include: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (MTC) which premiered on Broadway in 2023 and was nominated for 5 Tony Awards including Best Play, Merry Wives (Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park, PBS Great Performances, 2022 Drama Desk Award Winner for Outstanding Adaptation,) Nollywood Dreams (MCC Theater), book writer for the Broadway bound musical Goddess (Berkeley Rep, 2022), the multi-award winning School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play which was originally produced at MCC Theater in 2017/2018 and has gone on to have over 65 regional productions and premiered in the UK in 2023. Jocelyn was a 2017 TOW Playwriting Fellow and has won several playwriting awards including being awarded the Dramatist Guild Hull-Warriner Prize twice, The Steinberg Playwriting Award, Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk awards. Jocelyn has also written for TV on “Russian Doll”, Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” (Netflix,) “Tiny Beautiful Things” (Hulu,) the new Star Wars series “The Acolyte” (Disney+) and she is also writing the live screen film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Once on This Island for Disney.