The politics that surround the way black people choose (or don’t choose) to style (or not style) their hair can be a tangled issue beyond the salon. Theatre-makers are increasingly tackling the subject in stylish ways. In 2015, as part of the Africa Utopia festival, the British African theatre company Tiata Fahodzi installed hairdressing chairs in a foyer at the Southbank Centre and invited black women to take a seat and share their stories. In the same year, performance artist Selina Thompson toured her solo show, Dark and Lovely, in which she poured drinks for the audience and told tales she had heard at hairdressing salons in the Midlands. The show took place inside a giant, almost grotesque structure made of weaves and extensions. At one point, Thompson picked a member of the audience to sit above her and oil and comb out her afro, a moment that felt tense, intimate and trusting at the same time. The Head Wrap Diaries, a dance-theatre show by London-based company Uchenna Dance that similarly mixes performance with audience participation, will go on tour in 2018.

Selina Thompson in Dark and Lovely, 2015. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Much of the on- and off-stage conversation about hair, black or not, revolves around women. Not so with Barber Shop Chronicles, written by Inua Ellams, which is back at London’s National Theatre for a second sold-out run. It is a revelation of a play, set in the round and with various props (signs, chairs, a giant globe) that allow the action to switch location regularly but always remain in barbershops. The show invites audience members to be a part of the salon action, and begins with members of the audience dancing with the cast and waiting their turn to have their hair “shaved” by the actors.



Throughout the play, the importance of a good trim (and all that entails) is emphasised often. Ingrown hairs are a no-no, and the men resolutely stick to “their” barber. At one point, a character uses the fact his friend went to a different salon as proof his alcoholism is out of control, while later, a young man waits hours for his barber, before cautiously allowing another to go near his head. However, hair is secondary to the setting the hair is cut in. Black barbershops represent more than haircuts: they are a space where men can interact with each other safely. At one point a Caribbean barber scoffs at his African colleagues and clientele that Africans don’t drink, nor go to the pub. “This is your pub,” he tells them, and he is right.



Often funny and joyous but equally poignant, Barber Shop Chronicles is centred around the fractured relationship between Emmanuel, the Nigerian owner of south London barbershop Three Kings, and Samuel, another barber and the son of Emmanuel’s oldest friend. The secrets between them are a contrast to the larger-than-life characters who burst through the doors. So often, masculinity is built upon the silences between men, but in the barbershop they speak both to and about each other.



This fast-paced exploration of black barbershops bounces around the world, from London to Lagos, Harare to Accra. In South Africa, a character speaks of feeling let down by Nelson Mandela but also of the son he has left behind in London; in London, we hear from the actor son who grew up fatherless and his struggles about how to play, on stage and in his real life, the part of a “strong black man”. In the wake of a shifting of the guard in Zimbabwe, the many references to Robert Mugabe often sting, particularly as the script has been altered in recent weeks to reflect the fact the long-time president has finally stepped down.



A scene from Barber Shop Chronicles by Inua Ellams. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Barber Shop Chronicles might be about the intricacies and rituals black men have when it comes to cutting their hair but the play is also about politics: the politics of being part of the African diaspora, but also of being a man. Of speaking up, staying silent, and wondering which is best. The play covers a lot, but Ellams acknowledges there is one topic it does not. “I haven’t allowed for the female eye to come into the play. Sometimes in barbershops there’d be two seats specifically for women, or the shop would be split into half barbers, half hairdressers. But because the play is so centrally focused on black masculinity, we couldn’t write a cameo in for one woman. The most logical thing to do, so I didn’t just slide something in to be a token, was to leave it out.”

Nevertheless, women are still referenced in the play. From Emmanuel’s unseen wife to the touching acknowledgement from a young man in the barber’s chair that it was his mother who brought him up singlehandedly when his father left.



While black women aren’t in the spotlight of Barber Shop Chronicles, Ellams and the National Theatre have recognised the part women have to play in the conversation about the politics of African-Caribbean hair. For the NT, the actor Ayesha Casely-Hayford organised the event My Fro and Me: Hair Stories from Women of Colour. Aside from occasional prompts of literary readings from Nicole Moore (author of Hair Power Skin Revolution) and prerecorded videos, the time was filled with testimony from the mostly black, female audience.



One woman spoke about how liberated she felt when she cut all her hair off, while another told the room that shaving her head was never a political act, but instead was simply laziness when it came to styling. Young people came up often, with one mother in the room hoping her children have better relationships with their hair than she had, and another discussing her surprise about how her son’s huge afro made people see him as threatening, despite the fact his mixed heritage meant his skin was very white. At one point, a black actor said chemotherapy took away the hair she had always deemed a problem, and left her feeling torn.

‘An idea whose time has come’ … playwright Inua Ellams. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Why is there this appetite for stories about black people’s hair on the stage? Ellams says: “I think Twitter, Black Lives Matter, reporting on the crimes committed against black bodies has helped. People have become accustomed to seeing people of colour brutalised, and the counter to that is to show people of colour beautifying themselves, spending lots of time on their physical selves. Barber Shop Chronicles plays into the dynamic where people just want to see joy and magic.” He pauses. “There’s that quote from Victor Hugo, there’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Black hair has been cast in the political sphere, particularly for women. Maybe it’s just time?”

