[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us, and thank you to everyone who came out last night for our September Get Lit with All Of It Book Club at the New York Public Library. It was a packed house. We had a rollicking conversation with James McBride about his book, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. We heard some amazing jazz from singer Carla Cook. It was sold out, but you can hear it on the radio on Monday.

We wanted to announce next month's book today so you can get your tickets. We'll be reading Yellowface by author R. F. Kuang. It's a satirical novel about a writer who will do anything to make it in publishing, including engaging in some cultural appropriation and theft. R. F. Kuang will join me on Thursday, October 26th at 6:00 PM at the New York Public Library, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. That's 5th Avenue and 40th Street. They're gorgeous rooftop space, and we have very special musical guest, singer-songwriter, mxmtoon.

I said this last night, she has 2.8 million followers on TikTok, so you might want to get your tickets now. Tickets are free, but you have to reserve them in advance. Head to wnyc.org/getlit to find out how to get yours today. That is next month. What's happening right now is Jaja's African Hair Braiding.

[music]

Next Tuesday is opening night for the Broadway play, Jaja's African Hair Braiding. The story takes place on one hot day in Harlem at a braiding shop and reveals the joy and pain of the immigrant women who work there. There's Miriam, who's from Sierra Leone and is polite and friendly, maybe a little bit quiet, but we get to know her better when she has a heartfelt conversation with her customer Jennifer, who's a little skittish at first but comes around as she gets to know the women, and she gets to know them because she's asked for micro braids, so she's going to be there all day long.

There's Marie, the prep school valedictorian daughter of Jaja, the salon owner who runs the shop. Marie is in charge of the day while her mother, Jaja, is off to City Hall to get married. Marie tells everyone she's taking a gap year thinking things through before heading to an Ivy League school, but that might not happen. There's Aminata who has some man troubles. Ndidi, a bubbly braider renting a chair in the salon, who some clients prefer to the old Gar, specifically, Bea. Bea is opinionated. Hers is correct, of course.

She's been there a long time, and she makes sure everyone else knows it. With demanding clients coming and going, the play reveals how life can profoundly change minute by minute and hour by hour. Jaja's African Hair Braiding is currently in previews at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. It officially opens on October 3rd. With me now is playwright Jocelyn Bioh. Jocelyn, welcome.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: Thank you. Hi.

Alison Stewart: Hi, and Director Whitney White.

Director Whitney White: Hi.

Alison Stewart: And Actor Zenzi Williams who plays Bea.

Actor Zenzi Williams: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Opinionated Bea.

[laughter]

Actor Zenzi Williams: Hi, how are you?

Alison Stewart: Jocelyn, you write in your playwright's note that you've had braids almost your whole life getting back to when you were four. You've been braid all kinds of shops, one braider, many braiders. When you sat down and you put on your playwright hat, what did you want to capture about the energy and the rhythm of a hair braiding shop?

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: I think it's just such a unique shop. It's such a unique space for women, for black women, for African. It really captures a rich tapestry of who we are. It's such a New York staple. I'm sure they exist all over the country, but for those of us who are born and raised in New York, we pass by these shops all over the time, and there's a myriad of people who come in and out and I just really wanted to encapsulate what a unique, beautiful, crazy, silly funny experience it is being in a hair braiding shop all day.

Alison Stewart: When you think about it being uniquely in New York Salon, what is uniquely in New York about Jaja Salon?

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: There's a hustle and a vibe about our city, and all of that is imbued into all of the women in the play. Whether they're actual braiders or customers. Even if they are braiders from another country, as you mentioned, they've taken on that New York hustle spirit and mentality, and how that all gets mixed into who they are as people that we meet in the play, I think is really unique. I just feel there's a rich cast of characters who will always come into a hair braiding shop.

I'll get my hair re-braided tomorrow, and I'm like, "Lord, who's going to be in there? What's going to be the vibe? Who even knows?" That's always the deal every time I go get my hair braided. I really wanted to highlight that. I feel there's a lot of people who don't know anything about hair braiding shops. Maybe they've passed by these women on the street, maybe they've passed by the shops, and they live above one, who even knows, and they know very little about what even happens or the women who make up the community in the hair braiding shop. I wanted to honor them in my own little comedic way.

Alison Stewart: Whitney, we have a set that looks like a salon. There's red chairs, pink walls, TVs. As a director, what's an example of a conversation you had with one of your actors about how to move about the set and really use the set to help the audience understand the character?

Director Whitney White: That's a beautiful question. I think the interesting thing about these spaces that these women inhabit is that they're lived-in spaces. They're not doing a five-hour workday. They're doing sometimes 10, 11, more hours. They really make these spaces their own. Each braiding station feels a little spaceship, like a little home. I remember in week one asking the women, all of the actors being like, "How can we really make this feel like our home?"

We've been entrenched in this shop for not just one year and not just one day, not just the hour and a half of the play, but for many many years and many days. I think we had a whole day where we just listened to music, the kind of music the women would listen to, and we just started placing the props ourselves, which is not typically the way that happens in the process. We touched all the objects together, and we started to have each individual woman grab things that she thought she needed and some of those choices are still maintained in the production. You'll come see.

Alison Stewart: Bea, let's talk about Bea. It's morning. It's a hot day in Harlem. The AC is wonky.

[laughter]

Bea, she gives off strong vibes from the jump. How would you describe where Bea is in her life when we meet her?

Actor Zenzi Williams: Oh, well, I describe Bea as a seer. She sees all and it's hard to be a seer sometimes, especially when there are so many things for her to keep up with at the same time. We meet her at a moment where she's navigating a new part of her life where she's getting less and less clients and also her friend is getting married and it's not something that she agrees with. We're watching her navigate this moment while also being a seer who knows she's right and who likes being right. We watch her enjoy talking [laughs] quite a bit. She has a lot to talk about on this particular day.

Alison Stewart: The play takes place in the course of one day in one space. Why did you choose one day as opposed to a week in these women's lives, or a month in these women's lives?

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: I think because there's a lot that can happen in a day. I think about really magnificent days and magnificent in not always the best way and magnificent in sometimes the worst way is that I've woken up thinking the day was going to be one thing, and then by 9:00 PM it was a whole other thing. There's that. I wanted to encapsulate that. Then there's also like, when you go to a hair braiding shop, you're like, "How many hours am I going to be here?" I do it every time.

I've gotten my hair braided probably hundreds of times, and I still am calculating, "Okay, if I start at one, I may be here to whatever." I touch my hair to see how many braids are left, I try to calculate the hours. You are counting time all the time when you're in a shop, whether you're the braider or the person who's getting their hair braided. I thought that that was important to really highlight in this space. This is one particular space where time is money, time is important, and people want to get in and get out of--

Alison Stewart: That's not going to happen. [laughs]

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: No, no, no.

Alison Stewart: It's one of the funniest moments is when this woman comes in and asks for micro braids and every woman in the shop turns around like she's busy.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: [laughs] I know.

Alison Stewart: Not me. Not me today. [laughs]

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: I know. That takes forever. I've seen it. I've been there top of the day. Somebody comes in wanting a really intricate style like micro braids, and you just see the fall happen on all of everyone's faces.

[laughter]

Like, "Man, this is the only money I'm going to make today." They do it, they still do it, and they obviously turn out beautifully every time.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Jaja's African Hair Braiding which is in previews now and opens October 3rd at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. I'm speaking with Playwright Jocelyn Bioh, Director Whitney White, and Zenzi Williams, who plays Bea. Back to taking place in a day as a director, what's challenging about that for you, and then what was interesting to you?

Director Whitney White: That's a great question. I think what's challenging is trying to find a way to honestly check in what happens to us physiologically over the course of the day. When you wake up, you have your coffee, you have your breakfast. What's going on with you? What's your energy like versus what's your vibe at 12:00 and what's your vibe at 5:00, and then what's your vibe at 9:00? Getting us to arc that out took a long time. I think we are working on it. We'll be working on it up until opening. What was really fun about that is, especially as New Yorkers, so much, like Jocelyn said, happens to us in a day. You get on the subway, you go to your job, you see your loved one. New Yorkers, we live very full lives, and sometimes we don't always take stock of what the currency of time really is.

That's been fun for me in the show to really stop and think, what's it like for a woman to spend five hours on one task and then you get to walk out and you don't have to do your hair for two months? Time and money and how that equates to the Black female experience, and digging into that has been very fun and juicy for me.

Alison Stewart: What kind of research did you do, Zenzi to play Bea?

Actor Zenzi Williams: I watched all kinds of videos. Bea is from Ghana, and so I decided to choose a particular place within Ghana that she was from. I watched videos of that. There's a specific vlogger that I loved to listen to and watch just because I loved the way her dialect came out of her mouth. That was really interesting for me. I did a lot of reading about braiders. I also had my own experience being in a braid shop so I definitely used that as well.

Also, I listened to a lot of music. I created a playlist for Bea. One song in particular was from Nina Simone called Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. The lyrics of that feel like they are exactly what Bea is just a soul who's a really good soul, and she just doesn't want to be misunderstood. I just used all of that to create this beautiful woman, whom I really love actually.

Alison Stewart: Can you share a personal experience that's made it into the show or Bea's character?

Actor Zenzi Williams: A personal experience I've had in a braiding salon?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

[laughter]

Actor Zenzi Williams: I used to go get my hair braided on 125th Street, the Apollo Beauty Land, I think it's called. They have a braid shop upstairs. I would get my hair braided by the senior braider in Apollo Beauty Land. The way she sat in a chair, the way she stood up, she changed an atmosphere. When she wasn't there, you could feel it. When she was there, you could feel it. I feel like I actually use that. Just the gravity of this woman was so incredible to me every single time I saw her. I tapped into that part of myself, and I believe it's there. [laughs]

Director Whitney White: It is. She sparkles like a diamond in a show.

Alison Stewart: Jocelyn, it's also a workplace show as well, as a workplace plot about how the women respond to customers, how they interact with each other. There's a subtext of a little bit of competition, especially between Bea and Ndidi where there seems like some women are preferring the new braider in the shop. What is the subtext of that plot? On the surface, the competition, but there's a little bit of subtext there.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: Well, it was also pulled from true stories ripped from the headline became my life because I did go to a hair-braiding lady who I loved, and I thought she was great, and she just wasn't doing the job well. I didn't know what to do so I decided to shift and try someone as it says in the play, try someone new. It just so happened that the new hair braiding lady that I was going to her shop was being renovated at the time so she decided to rent a chair in my old shop. The way that all played out when I walked in was really crazy. There's a very heightened version of that that I illustrate in the play.

Braids and making money like that, who knows how much money Bea was making every single day. That is now going away slowly, and she's watching it go to the younger, hotter braider who maybe knows how to do all the cool styles and can do it really fast. When we see Ndidi, we see she has the most customers in her chair throughout the play. I wanted to highlight that because, of course, there's competition.

It's a group of people who are all doing the same task, except people come in only preferring one person over the other or something like that. You have to highlight that in a workplace. There's competition in anything. Anywhere you work, anything you do, competition exists, whether you are the one enacting that or are on the receiving end of it. It was important to put into the play, but it also is a great thing to mind for comedy.

Alison Stewart: Whitney, when you started to talk to your team about what each hair braider would wear and what they wear tells about them, what were some of those conversations like?

Director Whitney White: It all started with a strong desire, I think that Jocelyn and I shared to create a real portrait of these people. These aren't fairytale characters. It's not a conceptual piece of theater that's reimagining something like a Shakespeare. These are real women that you pass, and they inhabit real spaces so we wanted a portrait that reflected the collage of who they were and their humanity. There's not really another piece of theater that has this much continental diversity in the play. That was very important. These women are from Senegal, and Ghana, and Sierra Leone, and they're all different generations. A big conversation with costumes.

One desire was to get it right and make it a real portrait, but one desire was to really tell the continental story, to show the intersection that these women lived at in terms of their heritage and also who they are and where they are in their generation. Some of them, like Ndidi, feel very fresh and I call them new-new. They're on TikTok, whereas Auntie Bea, "What is TikTok?" You know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: Darling, what is this TikTok nonsense?

Director Whitney White: We want the costume right away. You understand this woman's proximity to faith, traditional morality, culture, and western culture, and that was where the costume and hair dialogue circled.

Alison Stewart: Tell us about your costume. Tell us what you like about your costume, how your costume helps you become Bea, Zenzi.

Actor Zenzi Williams: That costume, when I first put it on, it actually smelled like the-- It's like the scent of the African market. It's the Shabazz African market. There was such a specific smell, and it is so good and it feels like home to me. It really does. I loved that about it first. I also just loved the fact that the embroidery reminded me of a woman I knew. My mother, my grandmother, they wore pieces like this.

My mother used to wear pieces like that to church all the time. I just felt very at home in that costume, which always feels good to me to feel at home. Then, of course, the slippers. The slippers helped me create the walk and the gate of Bea, and it automatically puts me there. That was such an amazing gift. That costume is a gift, and of course, that hair. It's everything.

Director Whitney White: I know. Wait a minute. Her hair kills.

Actor Zenzi Williams: That wig is everything. It really is.

Alison Stewart: I'm glad you did my transition. The hair, the wigs.

Actor Zenzi Williams: Let me tell you.

Alison Stewart: That's a little bit of magic.

Director Whitney White: It's Black Harry Potter.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: It's supposed to feel like a magic trick. You're supposed to be like, "Okay, we know that every scene is a timestamp. We know that in the world of the play, three hours have passed, except it's only been 10 minutes. How did somebody get their hair braided that fast?" It should feel like magic. I'm glad you had that experience.

Alison Stewart: I don't want you to give away all your tricks. Whitney, what is one thing that happens with terms of the wigs and the braiding and getting the braids done that you can share?

Director Whitney White: I can spill.

Alison Stewart: Yes. I think it would be great for people to understand what techniques are needed to make this happen.

Director Whitney White: I think I'll use the example that we talked about that is ripped from the headlines of Miss Jocelyn Bioh's life of what happens when this customer comes in, who doesn't realize she's in the shop and is betraying Bea. Bea's betrayal beat, I call it. She's just coming on in for some simple zigzags. It's funny when you read it in the script, the character says, "I want some zigzag cornrows." I'll never forget the moment we had when we finally saw the hairpiece. It was this beautiful intricate zigzag that our brilliant designer, Nikia Mathis had created when I realized the power of the show.

Anyways, this moment entails several things because she comes in with one look, her street look, and over the course of the 12 minutes she exists in the play, she goes from street look to partially done to a little bit more done to complete. That takes a series of wig parts that are pre-styled, pieces that you can let on and/or attach. Then the actor on stage actually braiding. We worked with an incredible artist who gave us consultant time and taught us all how to braid. Well, not all of us. Some of us could braid like Zenzi. It was a mesh of preconfigured design and real action on stage. That was all engineered by this brilliant woman, Nikiya Mathis.

Alison Stewart: Zenzi, you knew how to braid before?

Zenzi Wlilliams: Yes, I did. My mother taught me how to braid, actually. Also just by watching. My aunt is also a hairstylist as well. It's years of watching and trying on dolls. Then when finally my sisters allowed me to do their hair, [laughs] I was able to do that.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Jaja's African Hair Braiding. It's in previews now. It officially opens on October 3rd at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and runs through October 29th. I'm speaking with playwright Jocelyn Bioh. Oh, wait.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: Exclusive.

Director Whitney White: We have a little news.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: I know.

Director Whitney White: We just got it today.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: The show is extending.

Director Whitney White: Yes.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: It's extending to November 5th. We're really, really, really excited. Come check us out on Broadway.

Director Whitney White: We literary just found out.

[laughter]

We're so thrilled.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: Exclusive.

Alison Stewart: Live and exclusive on All Of It. Appreciate you. Playwright Jocelyn Bioh, director Whitney White, and actor Zenzi Williams who plays Bea. There's a lot of like if you know, you know in the show.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: Oh, yes.

Alison Stewart: There are TVs all around and the ladies play YouTube and they listen to Afro Beats, the Nollywood classics. There's this one very popular meme from the Nigerian film Pretty Liars 1. I'm going to describe it and we're going to play it, where a woman is very melodramatically running away from a man in a car. It sounds like this.

Speaker 1: Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Speaker 2: Why are you running? Why are you running?

Alison Stewart: Why are you running? It's got a bajillion views on YouTube.

Director Whitney White: Iconic.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: Oh, so good.

Alison Stewart: What is a favorite if you know you know moment? That one's hilarious.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: Oh, wow. God, there's so many. I think we kick it off in the play with the micros because not everybody knows what that is. They, of course, learn over the course of the play. I also love when that same customer asks her braider not to or to comb lightly because she's a little tender-headed.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: That got a big laugh my day. Do you have a favorite if you know you know moment?

Actor Zenzi Williams: Just the sheer gossip. It's the, "We're just going to wait, and then we're going to unleash the Kraken."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Whitney, how about you?

Director Whitney White: I don't want to give away one of my favorite entrances, but there's a wonderful male actor in our ensemble, Michael. He plays several male characters. In his first entrance, he plays the sock man. That is my if you know you know, because when you're sitting in those shops, the kind of vendors that come in and out, give you such a special burst of culture and energy and I just love that moment in the show.

Alison Stewart: As you've been working, you said, "Oh, we're working things out in previews." What's something that you've had to massage and figure out?

Director Whitney White: Oh, my gosh. Jocelyn Bioh is a comedic genius. I cannot say enough about the technical expertise and vision that she's laid out on the page. That stuff take-- It's like clockwork. I feel like I really had to revisit Martin and Living Color and Lucille Ball and Three Stooges and Who's On First? and all these things. One thing we've had to iron out is the dialogue between what we need to do to do [unintelligible 00:23:42] and what you need to hear as an audience to take it in, and that's a tightrope walk. That's something we've been working on is listening to you guys, but not sacrificing the integrity of the comedy and speed at which the show has to go to maintain Jocelyn's vision. That's fun. It's like a high-wire act.

Alison Stewart: Jocelyn, talking about walking and the rope because very, very funny, but you definitely touch on issues of immigration. You touch on issues of class, of Black Americans and first-generation African Americans, and that dynamic and how it could be fraught. When you were thinking about when you wanted to bring in those, I want to say important bits. Those bits that are nuanced, and they're not necessarily funny. They're important.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: No, I always have a spoonful-of-sugar mentality when I'm writing and working on anything. I think it's important for people to discuss or walk out of a show thinking about something that they never thought about before. Maybe recognizing an implicit bias that they had that they weren't as aware of. I knew I wanted to write a story about immigration. I wrote it in 2019. We were in a very different administration at that time.

There was a lot of conversation about immigration and there was also only one face of immigration as well. I really wanted to highlight there was a myriad of people and faces that belong to the immigration story in America. I think all of the comedy, all of the laughter, all of falling in love with all of the women over the course of the first 80 minutes of the play justifies the shift that we then take towards the end, which I won't give away. I think it's important that people take the medicine down with a little bit of sugar.

Alison Stewart: The name of the play is Jaja's African Hair Braiding in previews now opening October 3rd. Just found out, breaking news, been extended through November 5th. My guests have been playwright Jocelyn Bioh, director Whitney White, and actor Zenzi Williams. Thank you so much for coming to the studio.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Director Whitney White: Thank you. Pleasure.

Alison Stewart: Let's go on a little music that we get to hear in the play.

Director Whitney White: Okay, good.

"MUSIC - Davido: Fall"

 

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