Braiding Stories: Hair Care and Solidarity on Broadway

Abstract: This essay examines worker-initiated, progressive changes in the care of Black performers' hair at select Broadway productions that followed the industry's reopening after the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. Through a feminist analysis of the ethic of care that guides the labor of Broadway hairstylists, the essay demonstrates how the commercial industry's devaluation of backstage carework has contributed to the discriminatory treatment of Black performers. Ethnographic research with Broadway stylists and performers at two musicals— Girl from the North Country (2020) and Hadestown (2019)—provides insight into the generally invisible and misunderstood labor of theatre hairstylists and the social, political, and economic circumstances that led to more equitable treatment of Black performers at each production. The intimate professional relationships built between hairstylists and performers, the essay argues, illuminate the potential for creating cross-union solidarity to repair systemic racial discrimination embedded in Broadway's daily work practices.