‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’ cast talks humor, political turmoil

A hair braiding shop is more than a salon, it’s a community center. As a Black woman, sometimes you see the person who braids your hair more than you see your doctor or your therapist, says Bisserat Tseggai, who plays stylist Miriam in “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” which staged its L.A. premiere Sunday at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum.

Written by Jocelyn Bioh, the uproarious comedy, which opened on Broadway in 2023, explores a day in the life of a West African salon in Harlem. Over the course of a hot summer day, four hairdressers and a young receptionist spar and bond with each other and a parade of customers who arrive seeking transformation both physical and spiritual.

It’s an extreme rarity to see a stage filled with Black women, says Claudia Logan, who plays a combative but lovable stylist named Bea. Make it a story about West African women and Black hair and you’ve got a real unicorn when it comes to representation on Broadway, she adds.

“It literally made ‘hairstory,’ right?” she says with a laugh. “It’s now my duty to bring forth these specific voices representing the minorities of a country that was built on the work of minorities.”

Logan is sitting around a table in a downtown rehearsal room with Tseggai and two other cast mates, Jordan Rice and Victoire Charles. The women smile and joke as they talk, but they are also quite serious. The play might be a comedy, but its themes run deep.

“It’s a very vulnerable position to be in when somebody is manipulating your hair, especially as a Black woman, when our hair is so scrutinized in the outside world,” says Tseggai. “And I think that people don’t realize how much conversation happens in a place like this because of how long it takes to do our hair.”

One of the earliest gags in the show comes when a customer asks for micro braids and the stylists suddenly pretend they are unavailable. The painstaking work is left to Tseggai’s Miriam, a young immigrant from Sierra Leone who is working to send money to her 5-year-old daughter back home. The customer sits in the chair for the entire day, and when it’s over, Miriam’s fingers are so blistered that the others rush to get her an Epsom salt soak.

The show celebrates and recognizes the labor of women who are often overlooked, says Rice, who plays Marie, the college-age receptionist and daughter of the shop’s owner who is absent most of the play due to her impending marriage. Rice arrived at the rehearsal room after getting her hair done in long, thick braids with afro puffs at the bottom.

“I was there at 7 a.m. and I left at 11:30,” says Rice. “Four and a half hours that woman was working in my hair — washing it, drying it, cutting it.”

To prepare for their roles, the actors took three braiding workshops. They worked with wig heads and learned to do each style that their character is asked to create in the show. During the workshops Rice says her hands cramped, her back hurt and her feet ached.

“And it just gave me a deeper appreciation for the people who throughout my life have done my hair,” she says. “Yes, your story needs to be told. All the things that happen, all the wear and tear on your body needs to be highlighted too because the people who make us look beautiful should feel beautiful by being represented on this stage.”

The women, says Charles, remind her of her mother, a Haitian immigrant who worked as a nurse for 40 years, not just because she loved it, but because she had to — she was striving for a better life, and sent Charles and her two brothers to private school. Her parents, Charles says, “wanted us to have a certain version of the American dream.”

“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” is deeply concerned with the idea of the American dream — what it is and who is allowed to achieve it. Jaja makes a fierce speech toward the end of the play in which she asks what will be enough to make her accepted in America — if she is asked to leave, should she do it before or after she “raises your children” or “cleans your house?”

The women laugh knowingly when Charles mentions that the play takes place in 2019 and that the characters have no idea what’s coming politically. The play makes a reference to President Trump calling certain African nations “s— hole” countries, but the ongoing immigration raids and anti-diversity, equity and inclusion executive orders that arrived with the second Trump administration had yet to be felt.

Tseggai’s parents emigrated from Eritrea, and she says that many Eritreans have come to see the play. There is a deep sense of shared community and kinship, and no matter who they are, they call each other cousin, auntie and uncle. Their only dream when they came to America was of survival, Tseggai says.

“Where can I go in this world where I will be safe from war, where I will have access to clean water and food, where my children can be safe and educated?” she says. “As a Black person I feel like I’ve seen enough to know not to expect beyond a certain point because it’s not safe to in this country, not right now, at least. The dream that’s been sold — that’s continuously sold — is false advertising.”

There is no hiding from the fraught political environment today, the women say, but still they choose to focus on the resiliency of Black and brown people. They recall that they opened the tour in Washington, D.C., in September 2024 when Kamala Harris was the first Black woman to lead a presidential ticket. They were in Berkeley when Harris lost to Trump and the mood on set was dismal. Rice remembers saying, “OK, God, got it. So this is what you’re requiring of me.”

Theater has a way of illuminating the reality of any situation — and it always exists within its given historical context, which is why the women say they soon realized they had their work cut out for them. “We have work to do,” uttered by Logan’s Bea, is among the most profound moments of the play.

“As a storyteller, I believe that my job is to serve in the way that I know how, which is to give truth,” Logan says. “And the truth is, times are so bleak right now that we really don’t think there’s any hope in sight. But I’m also here to make the people seeing this show laugh, and to reflect it in a more positive way … because at the end of the day, these women aren’t broken.”

Charles nods, “Laughter is a tremendous balm for the array of atrocities that we are experiencing as a culture.”