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

A hair weaving store is more than a salon, it is a public center. Being a black woman, sometimes you see a person who pedits your hair more than you see your doctor or your therapist, says Bissuit Tseggay, who plays the stylist Miriam in the Jaji African Suspions, who arranged on Sunday on Sunday at La Premiere on the Mark Taper forum.

Written by Jocelyn Bioh, a loud comedy, which opened on Broadway in 2023, explores the day of the life of the West African salon in Harlem. During the hot summer day, four hairdressers and a young reception spar are associated with each other, as well as a parade of customers who come in search of transformation of both physical and spiritual.

According to Claudia Logan, who plays in a combat but attractive stylist named Bea. Make this a story about West African women and black hair, and you have a real unicorn when it comes to a shirt on Broadway, she adds.

“This is literally done” hairdresser “, right?” She speaks with a laugh. “Now I am obliged to put forward these specific voices representing the minorities of the country that was built at the work of minorities.”

Logan sits at the table in a rehearsal room in the city center with Tsiggay and two other actors, Jordan Rice and Victuari Charles. Women smile and joke when they say, but they are also quite serious. The play can be a comedy, but its topics are deep.

“This is a very vulnerable position when someone manipulates with your hair, especially as a black woman, when our hair is so carefully studied in the outside world,” says Tseggai. “And I think that people do not understand how many conversations are taking place in such a place from what time it takes to make our hair.”

One of the earliest jokes in the show appears when the client asks for micro -settings, and the stylists suddenly pretend that they are not available. The painstaking work was left by Miriam Tseggay, a young immigrant from Sierra Leone, who is working to send money to her 5-year-old daughter home. The client sits in an armchair for the whole day, and when it ends, Miriam fingers are so blunt that the rest are in a hurry to soak the salt of Epsom.

The show celebrates and recognizes the work of women who are often overlooked, says Rice, who plays Marie, college administrator and daughter of the store owner, who is missing most of the game because of her impending marriage. Rice arrived in the rehearsal room after she made her hair in long thick pigtails with Afro -layers below.

“I was there at 7 in the morning, and I left at 11:30,” says Rice. “Four and a half hours that a woman worked in my hair is to wash them, drying them, cut them.”

To prepare for their role, the actors held three seminars by weaving. They worked with Heads and learned to perform every style that their character is asked to create in the show. During the seminars, Rice says that her hands are closely connected, her back was hurt, and her legs were sick.

“And this simply gave me a deeper assessment of people who made my hair throughout my life,” she says. “Yes, you need to tell your story. Everything that happens, all wear on your body should be emphasized, because people who make us look beautiful should feel beautiful, being presented at this stage. ”

Women, Charles says, remind her of her mother, the Haitian immigrant, who worked as a nurse for 40 years, not only because she liked it, but also because she had to – she strove for a better life and sent Charles and her two brothers to a private school. Her parents, Charles, says: “I wanted us to have a certain version of the American dream.”

“Jaji’s African weaving” is deeply connected with the idea of ​​the American dream – what it is and to whom it is allowed to achieve it. Jaja makes a harsh speech at the end of the play, in which she asks what will be enough to make her accept in America – if she is asked to leave, should she do this before or after she “raises your children” or “cleans your home?”

Women laugh when Charles mentions that the play occurs in 2019 and that the heroes do not know that it will be politically. The play refers to the fact that President Trump called certain African countries “holes”, but the ongoing immigration raids and anti -rats, joint -stock and inclusive leaders who arrived with the second administration of Trump were not yet felt.

The parents of CGGAI emigrated from Eritrea, and she says that many Eritreas came to see the game. There is a deep sense of general community and kinship, and regardless of who they are, they call each other a cousin, aunt and uncle. Their only dream when they arrived in America, there was survival, says Tsiggay.

“Where can I go in this world, where I will be safe from the war, where I will have access to pure water and food, where my children can be safe and educated?” She says. “As a black person, I feel that I saw enough so as to know so as not to expect a certain moment, because in this country it is unsafe, and not right now, at least. The dream that was sold is constantly sold – false advertising. ”

Women say that today there is no hidden from a fraught political environment, but still they prefer to focus on the stability of black and brown people. They remember that they opened a tour in Washington, the district of Colombia, in September 2024, when Kamala Harris was the first black woman who headed the presidential ticket. They were in Berkeley when Harris lost to Trump, and the mood on the set was gloomy. Rice remembers: “Well, God, I received it. So this is what you need from me. “

The theater has a way to cover the reality of any situation – and it always exists in its historical context, so women say that they soon realized that they have their work. “We have a job,” said Logan's Bea, is one of the deepest moments of the play.

“As a narrator, I believe that my work is to serve as I know how to give the truth,” says Logan. “And the truth is that now times are so gloomy that we really do not think that there is hope in the field of view. But I am also here to make people see this show with laughter, and reflect it more positively … Because at the end of the day these women are not broken. “

Charles nods: “Laughter is a huge balm for many atrocities that we experience as culture.”