Tony-Nominated Playwright Jocelyn Bioh Wins Horton Foote Prize

Jocelyn Bioh has been named the 2024 winner of the Horton Foote Prize for her play Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. The Tony-nominated playwright will be honored at a private celebration at New York’s Lotos Club on October 7.

Bioh will be presented with $50,000 and a limited edition of Keith Carter’s photograph of Horton Foote. The prize will be presented by the play’s director, Whitney White.

“Any moment where we see some version of representation that we've never seen before feels like such a great invitation for more of these stories,” Bioh told Broadway.com earlier this year. “I don't want to be the last person who's written a play that has 17 different Black women and men in it on a Broadway stage. And I hope that I become old hat, or that idea becomes old hat.”

The judging panel included award-winning actors Kathleen Chalfant and Michael Urie. Chalfant, the panel's honorary chair, said in a statement: “This play is a perfect example of how the more specific a work of art, the more universal its reach. Jaja takes us into its very particular world and seduces all of us with its beauty and humor and great heart and dares at the end to tell the truth about this difficult place we live.”

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, which chronicles a single day inside a Harlem braiding salon, premiered on Broadway in October 2023 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. It was nominated for five Tonys, including Best Play. The Manhattan Theatre Club production will embark on a multi-city tour this fall starting at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in September, moving to Berkeley Repertory Theatre in November and proceeding to Chicago Shakespeare Theater in January. Bioh, a Ghanaian-American writer and performer, is also the writer of School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play. Her TV writing includes Russian Doll and The Acolyte.

Also to be presented at this year’s ceremony will be the 2024 Horton Foote Prize Gratitude Gift, awarded to Rattlestick Theater, a nonprofit committed to producing work that pushes theatrical boundaries, supports artists and promotes equitable resource distribution for new theatrical works.

The Horton Foote Prize, established in 2010, is a biennial award honoring excellence in American theater, named after Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Horton Foote. The prize is awarded to either a newly produced or unproduced play. Previous Horton Foote Prize winners include Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks and Lauren Yee.