The Politics Of Oil In The Niger Delta, A One-Man Show

FAIRFIELD —Fairfield University’s Quick Center for the Arts in collaboration with University College will present the award-winning Tings Dey Happen, written and performed by Dan Hoyle, on Thursday and Friday, November 20 and 21, at 8 pm, in the Wien Experimental Theatre at the Quick Center for the Arts.

In Tings Dey Happen, Mr Hoyle portrays warlords, militants, oil workers, prostitutes and the American Ambassador to Nigeria, among many others.  In this, his third solo show, Mr Hoyle continues to develop his unique form of journalistic theater.

The show originated in San Francisco and ran for six months, winning the 2007 Will Glickman Award for Best New Play in the Bay Area. Mr Hoyle was called, “A remarkable actor … Here’s this skinny white kid from San Francisco playing mostly black Africans, and he actually makes you see these people … a terrific show … a rich experience.” (Chad Jones, Oakland Tribune)

Already supplying ten percent of American oil, Nigeria and its surrounding Gulf of Guinea region have been targeted as the “new Middle East” of oil security. However, militants in the oil-producing Niger Delta are blowing up pipelines, warlords are threatening rebellion and oil company employees are being kidnapped with alarming frequency.

The audience meets all the characters in Mr Hoyle’s ambitious, comic and disturbing new play.

As a Fulbright scholar, Mr Hoyle spent ten months living in the Niger Delta studying oil politics. During that time in 2005-06, his sharp ear and astute eye absorbed the flavor, rhythms and dialects of the Nigerian people with whom he came in contact.

Tings Dey Happen is, as Hoyle states, “a distillation of the Niger Delta as I experienced it.  Many of the characters are composites, the monologues a blend of many people’s words and my own writing.”

Tickets are $25 and are available online at QuickCenter.com or by calling the box office at 203-254-4010 or 1-877-ARTS-396 (278-7396). Additional information is also available online.