Jaja’s African Hair Braiding

Play (2023)
by Jocelyn Bioh
Directed by Summer L. Williams
Speakeasy Stage Company
Boston Center for the Arts
South End, Boston
May 2-31, 2025

With MaConnia Chesser (Jaja), Dru Sky Berrian (Marie), Crystin Gilmore (Bea), MarHadoo Effeh (Miriam), Kwezi Shongwe (Aminata), Catia (Ndidi), Hampton Richards (Jennifer), Ahsley Aldarando (Vanessa, Radia, Shiela), Yasmeen Duncan (Michelle, Chrissy, Laniece), Joshua Olumide (James, Sock Man, Jewelry Man, DVD Man)

It is July, 2019, and the formidable Jaja (MaConnia Chesser), whom we don’t see until near the very end of the show, runs a hair-braiding shop in Harlem, NY where she employs a team of talented African and African-American women to do the work. Jaja’s daughter Marie (Dru Sky Berrian), a recent college graduate and a talented student, is running the shop for the day while Jaja is out getting married – to a white man named Steven Jacobsen (whom we never meet). There are all sorts of intense things going on in the shop. Bea (Crystin Gilmore), a somewhat older and also very formidable personality, has a certain amount of resentment that she does not have her own shop and when a former customer of hers comes in and chooses another braider in her place, she is jealous and livid.

We do, over the course of the ninety or so minutes of the play, get to see some women’s locks transformed beautifully, a nice piece of stagecraft indeed. Aminata (Kwezi Shongwe) has a lot of spirit and she and Bea get into some tousles. Various guys – James, Sock Man, Jewelry Man, DVD Man (all played by Joshua Olumide) wander in trying to ply their wares or sweet talk their wives. Miriam (MarHadoo Effeh) is a beautiful but shy woman who, at some length, speaks of her daughter back in Sierra Leone, the husband she no longer loves, and her fascination and attraction to a singer named Musa. Eventually, Jaja comes in adorned in her beautiful white wedding gown and gives a long speech on life in the immigration, United States, opportunity and what chances young and accomplished students like her daughter Marie have before them. The major drama comes at the end, and you can read about it in the spoiler section below.

Much of this short play is a slice of life view into the lives and interactions of the multiple people who work in the hair braiding shop and of some of the people who come in to get their hair braided. The cast of ten is quite large for a small play, but one understands, given the outline above, why that is necessary. The actions and interactions are indeed very lively and there are numerous places where one or more of the Jaja employees breaks into a terrific set of African dance moves. It is delightful to hear all of these African and African-American women exchange witty barbs and occasionally reveal something of their lives with one another. Certainly, one gets a sense of the artistry involved in African hair braiding, and the contexts that support it and that rivalries that erupt around it. Not until the very end is there a focused dramatic issue, but, at that point, the sense of why we’re looking into the lives of these mostly African immigrants becomes vividly apparent.

The show, overall, is lively, fun and entertaining, with a poignant twist thrown in here and there, and certainly a lot of drama right at the end. When, as Miriam, MarHadoo Effeh gives her long speech about her daughter in Sierra Leone, her failed marriage, and her passion for a singer, it’s quite compelling and endearing; Effeh does a great job with it. As Bea, Crystin Gilmore provides a sternness bordering on the sour which ultimately, in the final scenes, carries dramatic weight. As Jaja’s daughter Marie, Dry Sky Berrian is bouncy and animated, and as Aminata, Kwezi Shongwe offers a lot of spirit and pizzazz. In his various roles as the intruding huckster or husband, Joshua Olumide does a fine and pluralistic job, especially as James, Aminata’s husband, who offers a kind of bad-boy come-on a bit reminiscent of the character Boy Willie in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.

There are occasions when the speeches get a bit elongated; Jaja’s speech, and Bea’s speech near the end, could use a bit of trimming. As well, a little foretaste of the central drama posed earlier in the show might give a greater sense of dramatic suspense, rather than offering, for most of the duration of the play, the depiction, often colorful but undramatic, of the routine life of the braiding shop.

Overall: Energetic, funny, with colorfully drawn characters, emotionally powerful in spots, with a big and important message at the end.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)