Episode #139
139. The Stories Only You Can Write with Jocelyn Bioh
Creating the Conditions for Magic
What if becoming the writer you’re meant to be starts with letting go of the writer you think you’re supposed to be? As part of our Playwrights Mini-Series, playwright and performer Jocelyn Bioh gets wonderfully real about finding her comedic voice, walking away from writing when it wasn’t working, and eventually returning to it on her own terms. She takes us inside a process that is far less romantic than it is disciplined: writing plays in the hours before restaurant shifts, outlining before she sits down, working quickly when time is limited, and rewriting School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play 36 times before finding its ending. We talk about not being precious with your words, knowing when to cut what you love, following the ideas that won’t leave you alone, and protecting the time and space original work actually requires. It’s a conversation about trusting your voice, staying flexible about what an artistic life can look like, and remembering that sometimes the work that changes everything begins when you finally give yourself permission to write like yourself.
About Our Guest
Jocelyn Bioh is an award-winning, Tony Award-nominated Ghanaian-American writer/performer from New York City. Her most recent work for the theater, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (MTC), premiered on Broadway in 2023 and earned five Tony nominations, including Best Play, along with nominations from the Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle. The play launched a multi-city U.S. tour in 2024 and made its UK debut at the Lyric Hammersmith Theater in London in March of 2026. Bioh’s other written pieces include Merry Wives (Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park, PBS Great Performances and HBO’s Reopening Night); Nollywood Dreams (MCC Theater); and the multi-award-winning School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, originally produced at MCC Theater in 2017-18, which has gone on to have over 75 regional productions and premiered in the UK in 2023 and is due to have its long awaited Broadway debut in the Fall of 2026 directed by 2 time Tony nominee Whitney White. Named one of Variety’s 2024 “Screenwriters to Watch,” TV credits include “Russian Doll,” Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” (Netflix), “Tiny Beautiful Things” (Hulu), “The Acolyte” (Disney+), and she is writing the live-action film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Once on This Island for Disney. Awards: Creative Capital Award Recipient (2026), Horton Foote Prize (2024), Dramatist Guild Hull-Warriner Prize (2024 and 2018), Steinberg Playwright Award (2020), Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Adaptation (2022), Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award (2018) Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play (2018), Tow Foundation Playwriting Fellow (2017).