BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
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LUSE: I like to feel seen when I go to the theater or turn on the TV as much as the next person. But to keep it real, there are more than a few shows, movies and plays that have made me tired of capital-R representation. I'm not going to name names, but as a Black woman, sometimes I feel like stories that are marketed to me are actually talking past me or trying to explain my identity and experiences back to me when I just want to be entertained. It's tiring but also kind of boring.
And it leaves the most compelling and surprising stories about Black life on the shelf, which is why I am so excited to be talking to a phenomenal playwright whose work has been slowly changing the face of American theater while also expanding the way Black people define our identities for ourselves. Her name is Jocelyn Bioh. Jocelyn is a first-generation Ghanaian American playwright whose new play, "Jaja's African Hair Braiding," is nominated for five Tony Awards this year, including best play.
"Jaja's" follows a day in a braiding salon in Harlem and the lives, fears and passions of the ladies inside. Today we're talking about the everyday magic of your local braiding salon, the key to laughing through adversity and how her plays might be the perfect remedy for the social media diaspora wars.
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LUSE: Jocelyn, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
JOCELYN BIOH: Thank you.
LUSE: OK. So to start off, you have described the genre that you write in as African comedy. What does that mean? And what is your approach to that style of humor?
BIOH: Well, I think what has been really interesting is that the narrative around a lot of stories that center African people are set on the continent, are usually ones of struggle, strife, war, rape, AIDS, famine. But that's not the only narrative. And in theater, I found specifically that that was kind of the singular narrative that existed. And when I was first trying to get my plays out there, most people turned the plays away because they were like, well, you're kind of ignoring - insert whatever political issue was happening during the years that the play is set in. And I was like, OK, but I'm not writing about that political issue...
LUSE: Right.
BIOH: ...Or that thing. I'm writing about these everyday people living their everyday lives just like how we here in America are at war with who knows how many countries right now. But you and I are still sitting here, having a nice time, chatting on a podcast because we are everyday people living everyday lives. It felt like Africa or African and comedy could not work together. And so I just was like, well, I'm just going to say that that's what my writing is. So I totally just made it up, but it's also...
LUSE: (Laughter).
BIOH: Like, it's not made up because there's people right now somewhere in Africa who are sitting as you and I are, having a conversation and will go and have lunch and have a nice evening, whatever it is. And they deserve to have a play written about them. So that's kind of been my thesis statement with all of my work - is this, like, how do we add to the conversation of how the diaspora is being reflected and not make it one singular thing?
LUSE: One big theme throughout your work is cross-cultural, diaspora-wide, intra-community tension. And your newest play, "Jaja's African Hair Braiding," which is up for five Tonys...
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: ...This year, including sound design...
BIOH: Yep.
LUSE: ...Scene design...
BIOH: Yep.
LUSE: ...Set design...
BIOH: Yep.
LUSE: ...Costume design...
BIOH: Yep.
LUSE: ...Direction...
BIOH: Uh-huh (ph).
LUSE: ...An honorary Tony Award for hair and wig design, which was incredible...
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: ...And, of course, "Jaja's" was also nominated for best new play.
BIOH: Yes. Thank you.
LUSE: Yes - which, if you win, would make you the first Black woman to win the award. Black women have been nominated before.
BIOH: Yes.
LUSE: But you would be the first one to win if you won this year.
BIOH: Yes, which is wild to say. There's been 77 Tony Awards...
LUSE: Ooh (ph).
BIOH: ...Or 76, rather. So it's a sad and sobering statistic.
LUSE: And that is the truth. To talk a little bit more about "Jaja's," it's set in a braiding salon.
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: The set you had was unbelievable for that. It felt like so many braiding salons I had been to in New York City.
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: So it was just unbelievable. Like, I was like, oh, there's a braiding salon just like this literally around the corner from my apartment. But I wonder, what's unique about the hair braiding salon that makes it fertile ground for a play?
BIOH: Well, I mean, really the people who come in and out of there. First, you have the braiders who work in the shop. Almost all of them are from various countries all over the continent, and they all have such a unique story as to how they came to be a hair braider. It's not like they got on the plane, came to this country and were like, this is what I'm going to do. I've had hair braiders who were studying to be nurses. I've had hair braiders who - they had already been a teacher or a lawyer in their country. And then you have the customers who come into the shop...
LUSE: Yes (laughter).
BIOH: ...I mean, every single day. And then it's like - there's archetypes of characters who come in...
LUSE: Yes.
BIOH: ...That are just like, wow. Every single time I go to the braiding shop...
LUSE: (Laughter).
BIOH: ...There's always going to be a rude girl in here - every time, different shop. But there's always going to be some rude girl in there. There's always going to be somebody loud talking on the phone.
LUSE: Yes.
BIOH: There's always going to be somebody trying to bring their baby in there, which, like...
LUSE: (Laughter).
BIOH: You know, shout-out to you. You know what I'm saying? It's hard. Child care's hard - I get it - and expensive. But it's like there's always something going on...
LUSE: (Laughter).
BIOH: ...In the shop.
LUSE: Oh, so much can happen in a day. So much can happen in a day. And it looked like the actors were really braiding hair. You all would find these ways to dim the lights and do a time-lapse in the show. And then maybe a wig would get swapped out to really give the impression that we were sitting the entire day, watching someone's hair get done. That was incredible. I heard that the cast all actually learned how to braid...
BIOH: Yes.
LUSE: ...For the show, which is - I don't know how to braid. That's why I have to go - I have braids right now. You can see me.
BIOH: Yes.
LUSE: OK?
BIOH: (Laughter).
LUSE: I can't even cornrow. I'm so sorry I'm saying this, but it's true. I can't even cornrow.
BIOH: It's OK.
LUSE: It's not my ministry.
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: It's hard. Like, it's not easy. I mean...
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Why did you think it was important?
BIOH: It was important for the cast to know just how much actual physical labor went into what this job actually entails. And because of the intricacy of the wig design, there was going to be moments where they would have to braid on stage...
LUSE: Wow.
BIOH: ...Like, trick the audience into believing that that's what's happening. But we had a brilliant wig designer, Nikiya Mathis, who's our special honorary Tony winner.
LUSE: Congrats.
BIOH: Thank you on her behalf. She's the one who actually emphasized that we should have somebody to come in and do a braiding class. And so...
LUSE: Wow.
BIOH: ...She brought in Susy Oludele, who...
LUSE: Hair by Susy.
BIOH: Hair by Susy.
LUSE: Y'all, for listeners who don't understand, Hair by Susy - so often, I'll see some fly woman - famous - with braids. And it's like, I check the Instagram tag - Hair by Susy.
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: Hair by Susy. So Hair by Susy came in.
BIOH: Hair by Susy was our braiding consultant...
LUSE: Oh, my...
BIOH: ...On the show.
LUSE: ...Gosh.
BIOH: And there's another character in the play who is in there who's getting her hair braided for her birthday party, and she wants to look exactly like Beyonce. And so Nikiya went and was just like, well, who did those "Lemonade" braids? And it was Susy.
LUSE: Wow.
BIOH: And so she was like, well, that's who we need to bring in to be our braiding consultant.
LUSE: You had Beyonce's braider...
BIOH: I know.
LUSE: ...Teaching your actors how to braid.
BIOH: She touched Beyonce's hands. Hey. Her hands touched Beyonce's head. Wow. Like...
LUSE: Oh, my gosh.
BIOH: She was amazing. She was so, so amazing.
LUSE: That's so incredible. Did you learn how to braid?
BIOH: OK, well, I already know how to braid.
LUSE: OK.
BIOH: Oh, flex.
LUSE: OK.
BIOH: I do. I do know how to braid, but I don't know how to cornrow, so I'm with you on that.
LUSE: So - thank you. You made me feel so much better...
BIOH: You're OK.
LUSE: ...Now. Oh, my God.
BIOH: We're sisters.
LUSE: We're sisters.
BIOH: We're sisters in the cornrow struggle.
LUSE: Coming up, Jocelyn shares how her Tony-nominated playwriting may just have been influenced by "The Real Housewives." We'll be right back.
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LUSE: Thinking about your plays, specifically thinking about "Jaja's" - married wives, schoolgirls - they all feature strong ensembles. "Jaja's" had 17 characters.
BIOH: Yeah, played by 10 actors.
LUSE: Played by 10 actors.
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: I also know that you're a big fan of reality TV.
BIOH: Yes, I am. Oh, you're well-researched.
LUSE: Oh, yes. And so I'm wondering. You know, as you feature a lot of ensembles in your work and reality TV is often most compelling when it features an ensemble cast, are these complex and explosive relationships influential to the way that you write or think about putting an ensemble together?
BIOH: I mean, yes and no. I think there's something really interesting about humanizing the villain, which shows up a lot in all of my work. There's always someone you kind of are like, oh, my God. I cannot stand you. And then in the end, you're like, this is the greatest person in the history of the world.
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BIOH: What's crazy is, like, every single play I have written, for the most part, the least amount of people have been, like, six. It's always either six or 7,000, it seems. And I think I just like putting as many of us on stage as possible. I think there's something really beautiful about seeing different versions of Black people living their lives on stage.
LUSE: I know you're on social media. I'm on social media. We're both Black, so we both are seeing the diaspora wars constantly playing out. It's always Black people from around the world or different regions calling each other out, trying to call people to the carpet. And so, you know, as somebody who writes scenes of Black characters across cultures coexisting and fighting, what do you think when you see these types of conflicts bubbling up online?
BIOH: They do make me sad, honestly, because I just feel like there's a universality in culture, and to put judgment on it is so reductive. I'll say this. My mom is such a unique individual. That is, like, the best way I could describe. I've never met a person like her. And I never will. And many, many, many years ago, my grandmother passed. Her motherr passed. I went to Ghana with my sister, and we went to my mother's hometown where she grew up, which is a very small village called Agona. I'm from New York. And it was so enlightening because it was the hood. Everything about it was basically like me walking through a, like, hood part of Harlem or Brooklyn. It was people running their old mom-and-pop, you know, whatever. This one woman was - had, like, her own, like, little rice station. You know, instead of selling Icees, it was, like, rice.
LUSE: Rice. Yeah.
BIOH: You know, she was selling rice. She had such an attitude. It was just like, you want red rice, or you want this rice? And we're like...
LUSE: You're like, I'm home (laughter).
BIOH: Yeah. Yeah. It was...
LUSE: Back in New York.
BIOH: Yeah. It was so crazy. She just, like, really reminded me of, you know, the girl who just is always not in a good mood who works at the beauty supply store. It was so interchangeable. And it actually, like, really made me understand my mom in a different way because I was like, oh, she don't want to live her life like this. She didn't want to be in this neighborhood for the rest of her life. She wanted that upward mobility. That doesn't get more universal, especially for Black people, who, by design, have been oppressed by the system in a socioeconomic way. And it was so fascinating to me. And I was like, this is why my mom is like this. She grew up in the hood, and I didn't even know that. And I was like, we are more alike than we are different.
LUSE: That is so, so, so interesting to have had that experience with your mom in that way, almost like completing a circle, like, understanding where she came from and how that came down to you. It's really interesting to be able to complete a circle like that with your parent.
BIOH: And I think that that's why I try to explore as much as I can about immigration, about who people are in all of my work.
LUSE: I want to talk about that, actually. I want to touch on the timeliness of your play and also of that theme. I mean, the play was written in 2019...
BIOH: Right.
LUSE: ...At a time when there was a lot of media and government attention on immigration...
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: ...At the southern border specifically.
BIOH: Yes.
LUSE: But "Jaja's" is a comedy that looks closely at, you know, a microcosm of immigration issues among West African people living in New York. You've spoken about comedy being a funny way of being serious...
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: ...To quote you.
BIOH: Yeah.
LUSE: How do you find the humor in such a tense theme like immigration?
BIOH: Well, one, I think any great comedy - the thing that is making you laugh the hardest is a recognition of truth. When someone's impersonating their mother or, you know, someone's talking about going to the DMV, there is a recognition of truth about that situation that makes people laugh. I think all of my work - I try to, like, double down on the honesty, and that's actually why people, hopefully, find it so funny.
And then the second part of it is I think this radical idea that, like, we as a people have to find humor in our situation - otherwise, we would not be able to go on. I have to believe that a group of enslaved people many, many years ago found humor in something to be able to go on. I have to believe that people in prison somewhere and are now living hard lives are finding humor in something to be able to go on. That is a universality, I think, in any group of people 'cause realities of life are not going to lighten up. I don't know. I wish it would. I wish things would just lighten up. We have to find humor. We have to find joy. And we have to be able to laugh.
LUSE: Jocelyn, it has been so wonderful to talk to you.
BIOH: Same.
LUSE: Thank you so much.
BIOH: Thank you. Thank you for having me. This has been great.
LUSE: That was playwright Jocelyn Bioh. Her play, "Jaja's African Hair Braiding," is up for five Tony Awards.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hey, Brittany.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hey, Brittany.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey, Brittany.
MARK: Hey, Brittany. This is Mark (ph) from Fresno. And the IP that I think needs to stop being adapted - actually, I have two. I'm a high school theater teacher, so I come into these a lot. The first one is "Romeo And Juliet." I think there are just so many adaptations and versions of "Romeo And Juliet." It's been done. And the second one is "A Christmas Carol." There's just so many books and movies and plays and musicals. I think they both just need to be put to rest and enjoy the slumber of having had great adaptations already. Thank you.
LUSE: Wow. Mark, I did not expect this kind of controversy to come from a Hey, Brittany. Now, I will say I am kind of with you on the "Romeo And Juliet" thing. I feel like it's been done. Let it go. Where the controversy came in for me is "A Christmas Carol." I mean, I will say I get it. You are teaching theater with young people all the time. "A Christmas Carol," I imagine, is probably going to be interpreted more in the context that you're in than, say, "The Iceman Cometh," you know? So I get it.
I just want to say you bringing up "A Christmas Carol" makes me think of one of the most important movies ever made. This is a movie that came out in the year 2000. And it is called "A Diva's Christmas Carol," starring Vanessa Williams as the diva in question with a heart of ice-cold stone. I mean, come on. It's a perfect movie. It's got Vanessa Williams, John Taylor. It's got Chilli from TLC there for, like, some texture. You know what I mean? I mean, you had Kathy Griffin in there as the Ghost of Christmas Present. I mean, there are so many wonderful aspects to this film.
Now, I myself personally (laughter) - when it comes to IP I'm tired of, the very tippy, tippy, tippy, top, top, top of my list - we got to put the Marvel down. Lay it down for about 10 years. Let society reshuffle, OK? I don't know if there's any reason why what sometimes feels like 20 movies with the same cast of characters or interwoven cast of characters are coming out every year.
Look at "Spider-Man." They'll kind of put Spider-Man down for a couple years, and they give us a new Spider-Man. And each of the Spider-Men that they've given us has been likable. Like, I grew up with the Tobey Maguire version, where Kirsten Dunst was playing MJ. My father grew up watching the "Spider-Man" cartoon on TV. And now one day, I'm going to have a child. They're also going to watch "Spider Man," probably. Even I, an adult who does not really like cartoons, have really enjoyed the "Spider-Verse" series 'cause we haven't seen Miles Morales for the past, like, umpteen years. Unless you're going to give me something new, I say, like, let's just go ahead. Let's put the Marvel down.
Mark, I hope you have a great weekend down in Fresno. And to the rest of you, I hope that you see something new this weekend (laughter). All right. Now, if you want to be heard on an upcoming Hey, Brittany, I have a question for you. Summer is right around the corner. So you already know we need a good soundtrack to get us through. So my question is, what is your prediction for the song of the summer? Right now it's looking, in some circles, like Tinashe's "Nasty" may be taking over, but you tell me. Send us a voice memo at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
COREY ANTONIO ROSE, BYLINE: Corey Antonio Rose.
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LUSE: This episode was edited by...
JESSICA PLACZEK, BYLINE: Jessica Placzek.
LUSE: Engineering support came from...
STACEY ABBOTT, BYLINE: Stacey Abbott.
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
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