There’s no doubt that Jocelyn Bioh’s play “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” is a laugh-out-loud comedy.
The vibrant 90-minute play that kicked off La Jolla Playhouse’s 2025-26 season on Thursday night, is filled with funny lines, dancing, amusing characters and the joyful celebration of life.
But make no mistake, the West African and American women who populate the bubble-gum pink Harlem salon are warriors. They’re strong, resilient Black women who their households working long hours, take care of each other and fight for their dignity, their rights and their hopes for the American Dream.
The play is set on a hot August day in 2019, not long after then-first-term President Trump reportedly told a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators that Haiti and African countries were “sh–hole nations” whose citizens should be blocked from the immigrant visa lottery program.
Politics are barely discussed in Bioh’s play, but the salon staff’s worries about deportation and the loss of their rights are always bubbling quietly underneath the jokes and gossip. The play made its world premiere on Broadway in 2023, 13 months before Trump was re-elected for a second term, and given the mass deportations now under way, “Jaja’s” now feels exceptionally timely.
Although the play — directed here with authenticity and a deft eye for physical comedy by Whitney White — is named for the salon owner Jaja, she makes just one eye-popping appearance in the penultimate scene. Instead, the audience watches a full day in the life of the salon, which is run by Jaja’s plucky teenage daughter, Marie, a high school valedictorian who lacks the birth certificate to qualify for college student loans. Customers come and go, street merchants stop in to peddle their wares and the hair braiders bicker over clients, laugh, dance, watch African soap operas on TV and work until their fingers bleed.
Bisserat Tseggai is a standout as Miriam, the sweet, soft-spoken and optimistic braider who hopes to reclaim the toddler daughter she left behind in Sierra Leone years ago. Claudia Logan is a fierce powerhouse with a heart as the aging, Ghanaian braider Bea. Tiffany Renee Johnson does well in showing the two sides of Senegalese braider Aminata, who is proud and dignified with her peers, but vulnerable to the wiles of her cheating, out-of-work husband. And Aisha Sougou has warmth and playful exuberance as Nigerian-born Ndidi, the salon’s youngest, fastest and top-earning braider.
And showing terrific contrast as mother and daughter are the regal Victoire Charles as proud bride-to-be Jaja, and the scrappy, streetwise Jordan Rice as her daughter Marie. Four other actors play customers and visitors. Mia Ellis plays the aspiring writer Jennifer, and actors Melanie Brezill, Leovina Charles and Onye Eme-Akwari each play three to four roles.
“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” is a funny play with well-crafted characters and it has a twist ending that will make you think, especially right now.
‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 1 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through June 15
Where: La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, UC San Diego
Tickets: $30-$90
Info: 858-550-1010
Online: lajollaplayhouse.org
