JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING Comes to SpeakEasy Stage

SpeakEasy Stage Company presents the New England Premiere of the Tony-nominated play Jaja’s African Hair Braiding by Jocelyn Bioh, a powerful comedic tale about joy, dreams, community, and sisterhood.  On a hot summer day in Harlem in 2019, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding salon is open for business, even though its eponymous owner is hours away from getting married.  Presiding over the shop’s team of talented, high-spirited, West African designers is Jaja’s daughter Marie, a DREAMer who has set her sights on college.  When shocking news disrupts the day’s festivities, the women must grapple with what it means to be outsiders in the place they call home.

Norton Award-winner Summer L. Williams, who previously directed Jocelyn Bioh’s play School Girls: Or, the African Mean Girls Play for SpeakEasy, will return to direct Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.  Williams is an award-winning director and Co-Founder/Associate Artistic Director of Company One Theatre in Boston. Her most recent directing credits include August Wilson’s King Hedley II (Actors’ Shakespeare Project - 2024 Elliot Norton Award nomination); Morning, Noon, and Night (World Premiere by Kirsten Greenidge, Company One); How We Got On (Emerson Stage); and The Boy Who Kissed the Sky (Company One). 

Williams has assembled an top-notch cast that features Ashley Aldarondo, Dru Sky Berrian, Catia, Maconnia Chesser, Yasmeen Duncan, MarHadoo Effeh, Crystin Gilmore, Joshua Olumide, Hampton Richards, and Kwezi Shongwe.  (Full Bios on SpeakEasy’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding page.) 

The SpeakEasy design team for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding includes Janie E. Howland (scenic design); Danielle Dominique Sumi (costumes); Christopher Grusberg (lighting); Aubrey Dube (sound), David Prescott (props), and Nadja Vanterpol (hair).  Elizabeth Yvette Ramirez is Production Stage Manager.  Athéne-Genesis Baptiste is the Assistant Stage Manager.  

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding runs five weeks, May 2 - 31, 2025, in the Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., in Boston’s South End.